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[Sheb]

Kind of a virtuous circle: as society become more accepting, more people come out, so more people actually know LGTB people, so they're more accepting...

[Morrigi]

Makes plenty of sense from my perspective.

[SalmonGod]

There's a whole bunch of factors that all have positive feedback relationships with each other.  There's been great activism and cultural effort for more tolerance and understanding in general, but especially targeting deep prejudices such as what's direct at LGBTs.  Those efforts have been riding strongly on the rise of the information era.  The information era has also been damaging the strict influence that religion has had on people's lives, making them more receptive.  As people open up to each other, the barriers just keep weakening and progress accelerating.

[Devling]

Certainly doesn't mean that everything is good.

After all, the internet allows people that hate others to have an easy and anonymous way to commit hate speech, and to talk with other people that hate the same kind of people they do.

[alway]

Be sure to listen to this week's This American Life episode. It's part 2 of that great episode on the clusterfuck which is the software patent system.

[Scoops Novel]

Link please.

[alway]

Yeah, it takes a couple days after it airs before the podcast version goes up; but it's up now:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/496/when-patents-attack-part-two
Part 1, from 2 years ago, can be found here:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/441/when-patents-attack


Also, a related story: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/06/obama-administration-comes-out-swinging-against-patent-trolls/
There's some pretty strong motion in Congress and the White House to push against this stuff now! Huzzah!
And Vermont is fighting back against one of the companies mentioned towards the end of the episode; the one extorting money from small businesses and non-profit charities: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/05/patent-troll-that-wants-1000-per-worker-gets-sued-by-vermont-a-g/

[Scoops Novel]

Thank you very much alway.

[Nadaka]

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/cheerios-stands-tv-ad-showing-151048704.html

Cherio's had an ad with a little mixed race girl, a black dad and a white mom eating and talking about cereal. THE HORROR! This makes it controversial somehow. The yahoo articles comment section is disabled.

[Sheb]

I bet it's all part of Cheerios' campaign, to create the impression they're standing up against outrage and cast them as the good guys.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Ah, yes, the EA Oppression Gambit.

[Sheb]

I don't know of that one?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

EA was having some scandal (there have been so many I don't actually remember what it was), and they tried to deflect it by saying that the critics were all homophobes who hated EA for their LGBT friendliness.

[Nadaka]

In this case, Cherio's really was getting attacked by racist in their youtube channel.

[Sheb]

Sure, I mean, you know Youtube, there probably was some dumb racists making racists comment. It's Youtube! But I'm pretty sure they blew that out of proportion to grab more attention. How else would journalists even know the comment had been disabled if they had not communicated about it?