[zozbot234]

> The change in tone in the 80s he refers to is the ascendance of civil rights, feminism and gay rights

Source? These movements are more than 100 years old. (yes, even gay acceptance basically got its start in the early 19th c.!) Did they really progress all that much from the 1980s to the present day? This is very much non-obvious, at least to me.

[tootie]

That's being very literal. Jim Crow lasted until 1965. Loving v Virginia was 1967. Gay marriage was made legal in 2015. The 80s wasn't necessarily a watershed but it was a generation raised knowing that a civil rights battle could be won.