I recently watched the 1979 film Real Life, the first feature directed by Albert Brooks. There’s plenty to say about it as a film and a comedy, especially in light of its retroactive relevance as a satire of reality-based filmmaking in a programming era in which no city’s pampered, appalling self-absorbed housewives are safe from the profitable scrutiny of Bravo’s fleet of cameras. Separate from the facets that are the usual fodder for cinematic analysis, I found something particularly striking. At two completely different points, Brooks uses the word “abortion” in punchlines. Indeed, in the second instance, the word is nearly the entirety of the joke. This is a film that’s over thirty years old, released six years after the historic Roe v. Wade decision. Brooks isn’t trying to shock his audience with this word, either. It’s not some prototype version of a Sacha Baron Cohen comedy, intending to get laughs through the sheer shock of its audacity, treating taboos with disregard for the fun of it. Instead, it’s just part of the language, the vocabulary of the day. There’s no fear of the word, no attempt to cowardly bury it in the manner of modern filmmakers. There’s a presumption that adults can handle it. So a film made three decades ago is more casually bold than anything that might come out today. How can that be? A little consideration of the calendar might clear that up.

Real Life was released in March of 1979. The Moral Majority was founded in the summer of 1979.

Reacting with horror to the supposed sinful progress of American society, Jerry Falwell and his equally hate-filled cronies stormed the public square, distorting the discourse with their rhetoric of demonization. They wanted “their” country back, the typical demand of the privileged posing as the oppressed. They were incensed about abortion rights, but it went beyond that with the group vociferously opposing government aid to the poor, and any steps towards making certain that all citizens are treated equally, fairly and with respect. Ironically, an organization that cloaked itself in Christian piety fought their fiercest battles against the governmental overtures most in line with the teachings of Jesus. They were successful enough in their ongoing campaign of intolerance that the Moral Majority closed up shop ten years later, in part because they had so thoroughly transformed the cultural landscape that, as a college professor that studied the movement noted at the time, they had no more enemies to fight. Their toxic legacy lingers. For example, recent efforts to realize gravely needed health care reform were hobbled and harmed by craven acquiescing to myopic, single-issue zealots, and the same diversionary protests about Congressional overreaching that Phyllis Schafly once used to do in the Equal Rights Amendment.

Given that context, my optimism about returning to the gradually increasing social enlightenment that characterized the late nineteen-sixties and much of the seventies is resolutely cautious. The forces for proud stagnation have been noisier than ever since the election of Barack Obama, even if there are fresh indications that their candle is down to its last ugly clumps of wax. But I must admit that yesterday felt different.

Judge Vaughn Walker’s ruling that concluded California’s famed and infamous Proposition 8 is unconstitutional is not the end of this matter, not by a long shot. It was just five years ago, after all, that conservative activists were openly referring to gay marriage as “the new abortion,” an issue that would provide them with endless streams of donations and the political power that comes with the resulting overstuffed coffers. They’re not going to shrug and move on, especially since there’s an appeals process to go through and mindlessly decrying the scourge of “judicial activism” is a tool they use more frequently than an overbooked plumber uses a wrench. Considering the Supreme Court is well-stocked with intellectually suspect figures who subscribe to the Republican notion that adoration of the U.S. Constitution is highly situational, this could all end as poorly as a Sunday drive with Toonces.

Still, yesterday felt like a turning point. Maybe it was the media’s newfound and overdue inclination to frame this as a civil rights issue instead of a game of political brinkmanship. (I’ll quickly concede that this observation doesn’t include consideration of whatever party line Fox News and their ilk is spewing. I actually dared to wade into the fetid waters of Rupert Murdoch’s televised manipulation this morning, but when I watched through preemptively wincing eyes the anchor was concentrating on some sort of trumped up outrage over municipal officials clamping down on lemonade stands.) Maybe it was the ecstatic revelry of people given an official validation of their love, even though that should be unnecessary in this day and age. Maybe it was the simple image of the two attorneys who faced off against one another in Bush v. Gore standing side by side, nodding in agreement as they detailed the overwhelming superiority of their evidence in their victorious argument against institutionalized injustice.

Whatever the reason, it began to seem as if movements that had been purposefully and maliciously stalled generations ago could finally begin again. All of the change that swept through the culture in the sixties and seventies may have been disconcerting for some, perhaps even understandably so, especially given the commonplace exploitation of prejudice and fear for the soulless goal of consolidating political power. But really, was it such a wild, revolutionary notion that the hard-fought triumphs of the Civil Rights Movement should usher in a broader evaluation of how effectively our society was fulfilling the national promise articulated in the Pledge of Allegiance as “liberty and justice for all”? Was it so brash and terrible to reassert equality as one of the fundamentals of democracy, and the most compelling proof of the inherent value of American freedom?

For some, it was, and those individuals have held the nation hostage for as long as I can remember. Yesterday a court decision delivered them a tough blow in what they fondly call their “culture war,” a war they’ve been winning since at least the moment Ronald Reagan became the 40th president of the United States. When it came time for him to run for reelection, he surveyed the wreckage of his first term and falsely declared it “morning in America again.” It wasn’t true then, and, sadly, it’s not true now. With yesterday’s decision, though, I swear I see cracks of light on the distant horizon.