Yes, those of us who remember the 70s (well, some of em anyway) and the 80s remember when you just didn't talk about such things. No real gay characters on TV until Soap, of all things (unless you count Paul Lynde as a character). Certainly no openly gay people at my high school - of course, some of them _were_ gay, we kind of knew it then but it wasn't an open thing. Now Chapel Hill and Carrboro both have openly gay elected officials.
The progress example I use is this: in the Triangle of NC, an interracial couple still got stared at even in the mid 80s (thankfully, they wouldn't be actually confronted directly by that time). It was a rarity, even in a racially diverse community, to have an interracial couple dating.
By the 2000s, and certainly by now, you'd be really surprised if you didn't see a certain percentage of interracial couples, and you don't generally give it a second thought.
In fact, that dude in Louisiana got driven out of office for taking a position that was probably true of 100% of LA judges in 1950 and at least 60% in 1970.
On this stuff, at least, we are moving rapidly forward as a society.
