[giantDinosaur]

That's a somewhat odd statement. Gay marriage was legalised in several countries before the advent of what we consider social media (Facebook etc.) - and a lot of other social change happened well before computers were even a thing, let alone instantaneous communication. Can you expand on what you mean?

[baby]

My theory is that social changes happen when things get really bad for enough people, so minorities are often excluded or it takes a lot of time for them to get their voice heard/change to happen.

Do you have a source on a country that legalized gay marriage without social networks? I’m not saying it can’t happen but that would put a dent in my theory. I think Taiwan had it happen before FB but they have what I would consider social networks before we did.

[giantDinosaur]

Netherlands - 2001, Belgium - 2003, Spain, Canada - 2005

Taiwan was very recent - 2019.

I'll grant that none of these were before the internet but there's nothing uniquely special about gay marriage that required the internet for organising, a huge amount of activism was done in person, just like in various other civil rights movements in assorted countries pre-internet.

[baby]

Interesting! Actually, looking at the timeline[1] it looks like these were pretty isolated until 2011 and BOOM, in 2012 you get 13 countries legalizing it, in 2013 you get 35, in 2014 you get 42, the rest is history.

So I might still have a point?

Same thing if you think about the #metoo movement, all it took was a tweet for the world to start moving, whereas it took a woman to kill herself in France in 1944 for women to get the right to vote.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage#Timeline