I think you have to protect a community from the massive amounts of money being deployed by right wing and christian groups. Handed out now en masse to political lobbying. This is a huge billion dollar industry used to buy politicians and write the text of laws in their own anti-gay stance as part of their culture war on those not like them.

If history provides some sort of guide, maybe considering an aspect of what happened in the 70s in SF and other places. Where predatory beatings of gay people happened and the community had to openly talk of physically protecting itself. This wasn't arming themselves with rifles as I recall. But either way,  it wasn't the organizing to defend oneself that changed things in my view. It was the organizing to humanizing a marginalized population. Bringing forth a larger change of view how the culture considered gay as part of all communities and not some "other". It helped that at the human level, almost all families knew gay people in their midst.

And possibly, just as important to the sea change for normalizing, it was calling out the motives and money of the christian and political extremist who wanted a lock tight grip on their version of morality. The culture split along those lines, especially after Newt Gingrich's efforts,  and the middle moved away from their hold. That was then I suppose, now what?