The threat to gay rights comes not just from the traditional religious right, but from an emerging, politically expedient alliance. This "horseshoe" coalition includes post-liberal conservatives and hard-left parties courting socially conservative immigrant communities, particularly religious Muslim constituencies in Europe.

The gay rights revolution was not an independent victory but an incidental consequence of broader societal shifts, analogized to Estonia's independence after the USSR's collapse. Straight society first changed marriage through contraception and no-fault divorce, creating a freedom-based paradigm that gay people were later included in.

A growing number of straight individuals are claiming a "queer" identity as "alphabet tourists" to gain social cachet as rebels. This is tone-deaf to the historical suffering of gay people who were involuntarily excluded. These tourists will likely abandon the community as soon as social tides turn against it.

Survey data shows declining public acceptance for LGBTQ+ people since the late 2010s. This is attributed not just to right-wing attacks, but to a public backlash against policies seen as 'objectively ridiculous,' creating a resentment that harms the entire community, not just trans people.

The fact that slavery abolition was a highly contingent event demonstrates that moral progress isn't automatic. This shouldn't be seen as depressing, but empowering. It proves that positive change is the direct result of deliberate human choices and collective action, not a passive trend. The world improves only because people actively work to make it better.

The argument that we shouldn't lock in our values to allow for future "moral progress" is flawed. We judge the past by our current values, so it always looks less moral. By that same token, any future moral drift will look like degradation from our present viewpoint. There is no objective upward trend to defer to.

There's a vast distance between knowing something is wrong and acting on it. Like modern people walking past the homeless or eating meat despite ethical concerns, societies for centuries possessed the moral insight that slavery was wrong but did nothing. Successful movements are the rare exception, not the norm.

The movement's greatest successes, like marriage equality, came from its 'bourgeois normie' wing focused on inclusion. After these victories, this wing disengaged, allowing a radical faction—focused on upending norms like the nuclear family—to dominate. This alienates the majority and jeopardizes past gains.

Social movements build on one another. The campaign against slavery was not an isolated event; it directly inspired and provided the organizational template for the 19th-century women's rights movement. Similarly, the US Civil Rights movement created the model and momentum for the gay rights movement, showing how progress on one issue makes progress on others more likely.