There is no trend towards liberalism except in western nations, and even that is debatable. People operate under this assumption that everything magically becomes more liberal. It doesn't. There have been regressions and progressions. Progress is not guaranteed.

> Plenty of academic study backs this up, if you care to research it.

With all due respect to the academics, there is more to the world than the Western world and most academics in the West have no ability to comprehend the East. I say this as someone whose family is from 'the East' and so I think I have some more insight into it than many people do. The simple truth is that about 3.1 billion people alone live in India and China and the majority of people in the world live outside the West and these areas are not seeing any sort of great social progress. Sure, there's a lot of economic progress, but social progress in the Western sense is absent (progress in the non-western sense is continuing). There is no evidence that any of these countries are any more closer to embracing gay marriage than they were before. On the periphery of the west, such as the island of Bermuda, they actually repealed gay marriage. Even California, if they were to ask the voters, would repeal gay marriage due to the presence of Asians, Hispanics and blacks, who voted against it the last time they were asked.