Subplot Kudzu

I can see the kind of social process you describe. A few years ago, a group of us were having dinner after a session of my Buffy the Vampire Slayer campaign, and we started talking about same-sex marriage, which at the time was not yet legal in California, but which nearly all of us actively supported (I think we may have had one person at the table who was neutral). And after a few minutes the one gay man present glanced around at the other tables and suggested that we change the subject. Because, you see, we were in Santee, which if not rural is an East Californian town with rural attitudes, and he had seen other people in the restaurant looking at us in an unfriendly way. And that was only fifteen or twenty minutes from the San Diego neighborhood where I live, where No on 8 signs are commonplace now.