A Sunday essay from Daniel Tilson: As twentieth century American history unfolded and longstanding barriers to social progress fell one by one, the key causative factor each time was collective social activism on a massive scale.
From the Suffragette movement that finally won women the right to vote in 1920 with passage of the 19th Amendment, to the Civil Rights Movement that put an end to publicly codified disenfranchisement of African Americans and won passage of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965; truly transformational social progress came only after long years of turbulent struggle, protest and public pressure applied to intransigent power elites protecting the status quo.
Today, another Civil Rights Movement that began in earnest in the final decades of the last century is finally achieving critical mass levels of social support and winning major victories. With anti-discrimination laws and regulations, court rulings striking down bans on gay adoption and expanding domestic partner rights, individual state breakthroughs on marriage equality, and the repeal of the military
