This article gets at something I’ve been thinking about a LOT in the Age of Trump – in the 70s, people expected American culture to make a liberal turn and positioned themselves accordingly, in ways that look absurd from the other side of the Reagan Revolution.

Like, George Wallace and the Republicans embracing feminism! Protestant churches agitating for legalized abortion!

Nixon’s wage and price controls indicated a bipartisan consensus for a planned economy! Add in Carter’s detente and people thought the USA and USSR would peacefully converge on liberal technocracy!

People expected Carter to legalize marijuana! And cocaine, which was similarly considered a fun “soft drug”!

There was the first, surgical, Transgender Moment, with Wendy Carlos Williams and Renée Richards! There was glam making queer gender-bending cool for the kids!

(You remember that line from Velvet Goldmine, the thing about guys calling themselves bisexual is eventually someone expects you to have sex with a man? You know all the “pansexuals” on dating apps that laboriously explain they’re looking for women women?)

“Coming out” as a political act dates at least to 1978, as part of the successful attempt to defeat the “Briggs Initiative” in California. This failed vote in a state that was reliably Republican until the 90s (Ronald Reagan campaigned against it!) seemed to blunt any momentum of the new anti-homosexuality campaign being run by a second-rate model turned third-rate singer because no more respectable elites wanted anything to do with it.

There were rumbles she was seeking alliances with theological conservatives, but c'mon, those guys had been locked out of power for decades ‘cause elites of both sides considered them obsolete and embarrassing.

BUT THEN