I find it more than a little disturbing that most of the interest in this comment centers on people trying to refute what amounts to a parenthetical that while a lot of things were looking pretty awesome in 1960 in e.g. the US, being black or gay probably weren’t among them.
Being black or gay in the west was better than being black or gay in any other part of the world. There are still countries where homosexuality is punishable by death. Being black or gay in the US in the 1960s was worse than being white and straight in the 1960s, but my precise point in my sibling comment is that this a stupid criticism because the West was pioneering equality.
There seems to be some widely-held superstition that if we acknowledge Western progress, then we will stop progressing.
