• EldritchFemininity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    1 day ago

    To be fair, both of those were won with plenty of violence and took decades to accomplish.

    The first Pride was a riot started most likely by a black trans woman who refused to be grabbed by the cops during one of their usual roundups of gay people and threw the first punch (brick to the face?) that set off a brawl across the whole area. IIRC, 100 cops were injured in the fight. But it still took nearly 50 years for gay marriage to be completely legal in the US. 1969 was when Stonewall happened, 2015 was the Supreme Court ruling (and that can be repealed at any time, like they did with abortion). Even the first state to officially write it into law, Massachusetts, only happened in 2004.

    MLK Jr credited the Black Panthers being armed and willing to do what he couldn’t as a major part of why he had the success that he did. And his protests were already illegal, risking possible prison time for those involved if they weren’t done very carefully. And even after 10 years, Civil Rights laws were only written after a week of riots and billions of dollars in property damage sparked by his murder. 10 years of protests, but it took less than a week for the laws to be drafted and signed into law when entire city districts started to get burnt to the ground.

    However, revolutions can be cultural as well. Gay marriage is a great example with actual polling numbers to present. By the time that the Supreme Court ruled on it, polls said that the country was equally split on the issue while as of 2021 a full 70% of the US apparently supports gay marriage.