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I.

I don\\u2019t know much about gay history, but the heavily mythicized version of it I heard goes like this:

At first open homosexuality was totally taboo. A few groups of respectable people with hilariously upper-class names like\\xa0The Mattachine Society\\xa0and\\xa0The Daughters Of Bilitis\\xa0quietly tried to influence elites in favor of more tolerance, using whatever backchannels elites use to influence one another. They had limited success, but they comforted themselves that at least they were presenting a likeable and respectable face for homosexuality that was improving the lifestyle\\u2019s public reputation.

Then a few totally-non-respectable outsiders with nothing to lose \\u2013 addicts, drag queens, men with lots of chest hair who dressed in leather and called themselves \\u201cbears\\u201d \\u2013 publicly came out as gay, held pride parades, shouted things about \\u201cWE\\u2019RE HERE, WE\\u2019RE QUEER\\u201d, et cetera. They were very easy to dislike and most people easily disliked them. But once they did this enough, people who were maybe 10% of the way to being respectable \\u2013 people not addicted to\\xa0quite\\xa0so many drugs, men without\\xa0quite\\xa0so much chest hair \\u2013 felt comfortable joining in. Once enough of them were out, people who were 20% of the way to being respectable felt comfortable coming out, and so on. Then 30% respectable people, then 40% respectable people, all the way up to the present day where there are a bunch of openly gay members of Congress.

I know there are lots of debates over whether this kind of \\u201crespectability cascade\\u201d is the way it really happened, but it\\u2019s a neat model of a way that these things\\xa0can\\xa0happen.

II.

And it\\u2019s especially interesting because it\\u2019s the opposite of the way I usually think about these things.

When I did pre-med in college, I learned physiology from a distinguished professor whose focus was herpetology \\u2013 the study of reptiles and amphibians. His pet issue was endocrine disruption \\u2013 hormone-like pollutants that were changing the sexual maturation of frogs and other animals, and which were suspected to have deleterious effects on humans. He made us read a bunch of papers on this, all of which demonstrated a clear scientific consensus that this was\\xa0a well-known environmental problem\\xa0and all the respectable environmentalists and herpetologists were concerned about it.

After college I went about a decade without thinking about it. Then people started making fun of Alex Jones\\u2019 CHEMICALZ R TURNING TEH FROGZ GAY!!! shtick. I innocently said that this was definitely happening and definitely deserved our concern, and discovered that this was no longer an acceptable thing to talk about in the Year Of Our Lord Two Thousand And Whatever. Okay. Lesson learned.