What "unregulated media" do you feel was responsible for "acceptance's first step"? I'm not an expert on this by any stretch, but I've studied both media history and LGBT issues, and the shows that get cites most often for doing a shocking amount of work in shifting American attitudes toward LGBT folk were, well, regulated media. Specifically, the network sitcoms "Ellen" and "Will & Grace," with earlier tentative steps in "L.A. Law" and, in the late 1970s, "Soap."

While "unregulated media" may have become leading edge in LGBT presentation in the years since, it's also become leading edge in reactionary backlash, from Fox to internet media to the right-wing propaganda pushed by Sinclair Broadcasting to their local TV stations -- which in many markets they wouldn't have been able to own if local TV markets were still more tightly regulated.

I'm not suggesting regulation is a failsafe panacea by any stretch -- I'm just suggesting that deregulation isn't, either. There is probably a balance to be struck, and it is not at all clear to me that the balance we have now is correct.

They are the Johnny come lates - look at the various zines and very small newspapers published way back when homosexuality was actively illegal for one and would have been called obscene material but regulation thankfully couldn't be meaningful. Although niche they certainly had a role in growing networks of allies.

On the other end of the contact Internet contact is a later one and although nothing concrete it seems very non-coincidental that generations where straight people could watch gay or lesbian porn, and fanfics being ubiquitous enough that Draco and Harry ships were well known even among people who never read a single one due to lack of interestm

The "balance" is a golden mean fallacy. Best illustrated by a rhetorical question that sounds like a death threat: Is there a balance to be struck between you being alive and unharmed and stone dead?

I'm not sure we're using "balance" in the same way, precisely; I don't mean "balance" in the "present both sides of every issue as if they're equal," I mean that there's a continuum of regulatory options in a given field and that "less regulation" is not always the correct direction. (Not that regulation is really a spectrum, for that matter, as you could conceivably have high levels regulation in a given field that's still regulating badly.)

So, to answer that last rhetorical question with the way I'm intending "balance" to be used: I'm not at all opposed to regulations in food safety, wiring standards, water treatment, etc., that shift the balance of likely outcomes for me toward "alive and unharmed" and away from "stone dead." :)