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Answerman - Historical Baggage

@ Hameyadea:

I think you're missing the fact that porn's a lost cause in the western world. There are still groups fighting against it(and not just traditional moralists, either), but they're not going anywhere and we've been living in a culture where it's considered normal for long enough to not care. LGBT issues are new and still divisive.

In Japan, on the other hand, yuri and BL are older forms of literature with fewer social mores against them. However, they don't actually connect to LGBT issues; yuri ultimately grew out of the class S genre of close, temporary relationships and BL has a tendency to be simply a stand-in for a heterosexual relationship. Both are understood as pure fantasy(much like with lesbian porn, liking it doesn't mean accepting the real-life equivalent), though the terms do tend to encompass works that ground themselves in reality.

Guys bad news. Charter is dropping Smile of a Child TV on February 24! Along with some other crap I don't care like sports channels! Good riddance! Save our Little Women! At least I have u-verse so I'm safe! poor charter anime fans

On the flip-side, Japan has largely accepted LGBT behaviors for a long time (as also evidence in the graph provided here); compared to the prohibition by the U.S. government until recently (and in some States LGBT bans are still in effect)

One main difference that was pointed out was it's far more common to see sexual issues, including LGBT stuff, in kids shows in Japan than it is here without moral guardians panicing that their kids are being exposed to evil things. You can see your standard nudity/fanservice in shows like Hero Bank and Fairy Tail, or more LGBT things like PriPara where a boy's dream was to become an idol so he decided to start crossdressing/become transgender, whatever you want to call it. I have to assume that being exposed to that kind of stuff from childhood is only going to create more tolerance compared to hiding that stuff from kids and making them discover it on their own in perhaps the least desirable way.

Then again, Japan is quite a traditionalist society - social movements there move slowly like molasses. Very conformist; things don't change quickly; positions of power ruled by septuagenarians from same old families. Kinda where 1950s America was, like in their treatment of women and minorities, before the social revolutions. Doesn't help that next generations of J-youths tend to be apathetic and doth not protest much, so that favors the status quo. So it'll be awhile.

There's more to acceptance than legalizing marriage, like not having to worry about being stabbed on the streets by bigots like you do here. Marriage is probably one of the last thing one should worry about, and whenever I see people quickly point out that some states legalizing gay marriage as some kind of measure of gay acceptancehings in this country, I have to wonder if that is part of the reason for them being legalized.