well women's suffrage diluted the men's power, and it gave women power, so it affected everyone directly.
Abolition too, whites didn't have slaves anymore, black weren't slaves anymore.
Civil rights? Nothing changes for most of the population, just for the discriminated minority. Gay marriage is part of this issue.
Here's the problem generally I think.
It has to do with the 'superiority' part of bigotry.
Around the time of the civil war, there were plenty of dirt poor Americans, but they felt superior to blacks.
That doesn't mean some KKK hood wearing hate type superioriy - it could mean paternalistic, the superior white race houses and feeds the blacks, suited to labor.
But it was kind of important and they didn't realize they were feeling 'superior', they just were.
When people considered the end of slavery, that wasn't an idea of blacks becoming equals much - just not slavery. They'd still be separate, doing manual labor, poor.
This became especially visible when the topic of equality came up. It's well illustrated by Abraham Lincoln as a politician, having to assure people about that fear.
"I will say, then, that I am not nor have ever been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the black and white races---that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with White people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the White and black races which will ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the White race."
"We know that some Southern men do free their slaves, go North and become tip-top abolitionists, while some Northern Men go South and become most cruel masters. When Southern people tell us that they are no more responsible for the origin of slavery than we are, I acknowledge the fact. When it is said the institution exists, and it is very difficult to get rid of in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying. I surely will not blame them for not doing what I should not know what to do as to the existing institution. My first impulse would possibly be to free all slaves and send them to Liberia to their own native land. But a moment's reflection would convince me that this would not be best for them. If they were all landed there in a day they would all perish in the next ten days, and there is not surplus money enough to carry them there in many times ten days. What then? Free them all and keep them among us as underlings. Is it quite certain that this would alter their conditions? Free them and make them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this, and if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of whites will not. We cannot make them our equals. A system of gradual emancipation might well be adopted, and I will not undertake to judge our Southern friends for tardiness in this matter."
It seems to me it was largely this desire to keep that superiority that fueled the things like the KKK and discrimination in the law and lynchings to 'keep blacks in their place'.
It took a century of these gradual breakthroughs where they couldn't quite hold blacks down creeping to equality for whites to get more comfortable with it - a first step was simply blacks becomeing educated after having been banned from learning to read and write many places, making them seem inferior. As blacks won the world heavyweight title, as breakthroughs happened like Jackie Robinson, as we were entertained by black entertainers who seemed as good as white ones, each reminded people that the superiority issue wasn't quite right, even as many people hung on to the desire for separate things lest equality be recognized - the separate entrances, seats, drinking fountains, swiimming pools, and so on - a black eating next to you threatened the 'superiority' thing.
It's why All in the Family could have an episode where Archie needed a transfusion but was HORRIFIED at the idea of a black blood donor's blood going into him.
I think that mentality is sort of at the root of a lot of this, and we see it globally as one group treats another as inferior.
In the 1950's and earlier I think we had the same number of gay people - but at that time, it was the common view that if someone was 'homosexual', that they were no different than a pedophile at being defective - their character was viewed as the same as a criminal, perverse, dangerous - you wouldn't want them in a position you had to deal with them much less in a position like schoolteacher. Reportedly federal authorities treated gays the same as communists in terms of not being suitable for federal security - and it was not simply that gays were vulnerable to blackmail, it was that they had bad character to indulge in such perversions.
It's another case of 'superiority' feelings, and helps explain - much like lynchings - why so many people reacted to gays with fury, we've had a lot of gays killed for it.
And similarly to blacks gradually breaking through things like Jackie Robinson, like Sidney Portier in movies, gays have slowly had breakthroughs. A Liberace or a Paul Lynde could be acceptable because they didn't say they were gay - they were confirmed bachelors, a euphamism from the time gay was unacceptable. In the 1970's, Elton John would sing love songs with a woman, and it could slowly leak out maybe he was bi-sexual - as a scandal.
Gradually, unspoken gay characters on tv became an openly gay guest star, then recurring role and finally star, and eventually even series like 'Queer eye for the straigh guy' - but surely not schoolteachers! Yes. Surely not adoptive parents! Yes, studies found no harm, and children did not 'catch the gay'. Surely not President! Well, not openly yet.
And that's where marriage comes in. It is like finding a black person sitting next to you at lunch or swimming next to you in the pool - equality in your face.
Marriage was a recognition of people's superiority over gays, and gays getting married made them more equal and that's why it was threatening.
The thing is how the racism, and the anti-gay feelings, are not ones the people realize they have. If you asked Archie Bunker, he'd start his explanation saying he has nothing against black people or mention a black friend, but then you'd see hysterical fears about that black blood.
And as people are forced to stop just enjoying their monopoly on marriage at the expense of gays, and have to try to explain why gays should not get rights and benefits, that's how 'civil unions' became popular - because they had no answer on rights, but a different name let them keep that 'separate but equal' title where they were better than gays because gays had to accept a second-class title for marriage. ANd that's why civil unions are unacceptable as a solution and the word 'marriage' is needed.
But people don't realize that's why they feel that way, and a whole industry of demagogues cater to them, by telling them they should limit gay rights by giving all kinds of more respectable reasons, like 'traditional values', sometimes with pages and pages of arguments without once even mentioning gays.
It's a bit like how people wanting to oppose equal rights for blacks in the civil rights era didn't say that, they used the more respectable sounding 'for states' rights'.
Suddenly American, especially the South, was filled with people who had the hobby of amateur federalism experts, out passionately championing 'states' rights' on civil rights.
This is a long way of just pointing out that those feelings are very common and powerful.
The South was willing to be killed and wiped out, in no small part over the desire to not allow equality - which the north strongly opposed as well. The South just drew the line at protecting slavery, while the north drew the line a bit short of that, with all the discrimination.
This is just meant to suggest a reason someone like this person in France could very strongly have these feelings.
When you say people aren't affected by gay marriage, they are in the way I mentioned, in the way they were by having to sit next to blacks on a bus or in a restaurant. They felt very affected because their sense of superiority over the other group was attacked, even though they didn't realize that's why they were so upset.
For people who don't develop that superiority feeling over the group, all of this seems like irrational nonsesne. Equality is a simple idea.
Our country had a lot of people like the guy in France, who would use violence to 'protect' what they thought they should. You saw it in white mobs rioting against blacks. It was the backdrop for the freedom riders in the 1960's, who would just ride a bus in the South as the law allowed, and get met repeatedly by waiting white mobs who would attack them, burn the buses, sometimes with the police allowing it.
It's not easy to change a society with a lot of that.
Anyway, I was largely pointing out how people are affected by losing the 'superiority' they have over a group, when civil rights are advanced.
And you do realize, there's still plenty of that around - we've just reduced the impact, removing it from more of the laws.