Yesterday I had to drive from Washington, D.C. to Baltimore during rush hour. This already long drive was made even longer thanks to missing a critical exit and remaining stuck on a local road for many more miles than were necessary, so I had lots of time to listen to the radio as I inched along in thick traffic. My station of choice is always National Public Radio – I’m pretty sure I’d memorized the “All Things Considered” theme song before my third birthday – and yesterday, not surprisingly, the lead story was about the gay marriage cases heard by the Supreme Court that day and the day before.

Listening to the reports and snippets from the arguments themselves, I marveled at the relatively swift strides made by LGBT activists, and the wide-ranging support for gay marriage in this country. Regardless of the ruling handed down by the Court this summer, it seems just a matter of time before the number of states that have legalized gay marriage outnumber those that have not.

Parallels have been made to the fight to legal abortion. In the early 1970s, a handful of states had legalized abortion in specific circumstances; a smaller number had legalized it in all cases, and a larger number of states were considering loosening their own restrictions. With their ruling in Roe v. Wade, the Court ensured that all states legalized abortion to the same degree at the same time. This was an important and long-overdue decision, but it also created the modern anti-choice movement, providing a very high-profile symbol to rally against and continually try to overturn.

But I haven’t heard a lot of concerns that a Court ruling in favor of gay marriage will lead to the same backlash. (That’s not to say that  individuals and organizations won’t continue to advocate for so-called “traditional” marriage – they will; unfortunately, our society will never be 100% tolerant of same-sex marriage.) And I wonder if that’s because gay marriage, and LGBT issues in general, have become so accepted and normalized.

One of the NPR stories I heard, about how “courtroom” LGBT issues have been addressed in movies and television shows, mentioned the 1994 movie Philadelphia. I remember how controversial this film was when it premiered, how there were protests outside movie theaters. Can you imagine that now? That a movie about someone with AIDS, a man that never shares more than a chaste on-screen kiss with his devoted boyfriend, could inspire such outrage? But because of movies like Philadelphia — because of all the pop culture representations of gays and lesbians, all the diverse portrayals that run the gamut from nuanced to broadly stereotypical — have helped move our society in a more tolerant and accepting direction, one in which being gay or lesbian or transgender is considered normal and even unexceptional.

Pop culture isn’t the only reason for this evolution, of course. But the more that people see LGBT issues being discussed or even alluded to in all sorts of mediums, the more normal, personal, relatable, and unremarkable those issues become. The more they become not even “issues,” and just parts of life.

With Roe, the Court asked society to catch up with the law. Perhaps in a few months, we will see that when it comes to gay marriage, the law is finally catching up with society.