The gay-rights issue seems impervious to political gridlock. Those who oppose gay equality outright appear increasingly isolated on the far right. And most traditional political opponents no longer see heated opposition as politically viable, or have at least come to realize that the moment is not theirs. In an interview out this week, Justice Antonin Scalia, the author of some of the Supreme Court’s most bitterly anti-gay-rights dissents, agreed with New York’s Jennifer Senior that Justice Anthony Kennedy, often on the other side, might be seen as the movement’s Thurgood Marshall; when Senior asked about history’s view, Scalia said:

I don’t know either. And, frankly, I don’t care. Maybe the world is spinning toward a wider acceptance of homosexual rights, and here’s Scalia, standing athwart it. At least standing athwart it as a constitutional entitlement. But I have never been custodian of my legacy. When I’m dead and gone, I’ll either be sublimely happy or terribly unhappy.

He went on to talk about heaven and hell.

That is not to say that the movement has completely succeeded, especially outside the United States, where anti-gay laws and attitudes continue to be enacted and are thriving. But here, in the U.S., progress continues, if not without objection, at least without much successful opposition. That is because the changes we are seeing reflect the culmination of almost fifty years of strategic organizing and movement building, and because the transformation is generational, polling shows.

The most breathtaking development since the Supreme Court’s rulings on marriage rights, three and a half months ago, and the one with obvious global impact, was Pope Francis’ basic acceptance of gay people within the context of Roman Catholic theology—“Who am I to judge?”—signaling a turning point of historic proportions. A Quinnipiac poll late last week showed that American Catholics approve of the Pope’s new approach by a margin of sixty-eight per cent to twenty-three per cent. No doubt the dramatic progress we have seen in the U.S. impacted the Pope’s thinking.

Shortly after the Pope said that it was time to end the church’s focus on demonizing gay people (and its “obsession” with issues like abortion and contraception), Andrew Solomon, a longtime gay-rights advocate and the author of “Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity,” told me in an e-mail, “The primary obstacle to gay rights—and indeed to various forms of human rights—is prejudice and bigotry that have been encoded in religion.” Solomon believes, as many do, that “the Catholic Church was long set up as our most vigorous enemy, and it’s to be hoped, very profoundly, that this change in position will filter down through the Catholic hierarchy and make religion once more the champion of loving-kindness, and no longer the instrument of oppression.”

Even Scalia felt the effect, though he argued that it was a matter of emphasis, not doctrinal change: “He’s the Vicar of Christ. He’s the chief. I don’t run down the pope.”

The anti-gay rhetoric we are accustomed to hearing from the Catholic Church became a building block for allowing discrimination in policies such as “don’t ask, don’t tell” and marriage inequality. As I’ve written here before, the American bishops of the Catholic Church submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court this year arguing that to rule in favor of marriage equality “would compromise the ability of states to accommodate religious and moral objections to homosexual conduct on the part of employers and individuals.” So much for that.

Meanwhile, a recent ruling by a New Jersey state court in favor of gay marriage there continues to put that state on a rapid path toward full marriage rights. It was the first case to hold for full marriage equality by citing the summer’s Supreme Court cases as precedent. Governor Chris Christie, up for reëlection this year and a probable Presidential contender in 2016, has appealed the ruling and asked that it be stayed pending appeal, but his political position is somewhat more nuanced. He suggests that the issue be put to a statewide vote. While the idea that minority rights should be subject to a popular vote is deeply problematic for human-rights advocates, this is the emerging position of the Republican moderate wing (at least those who don’t already fully support marriage rights). And not only moderates: “Americans have a right to feel that way,” Scalia told Senior. “They have a democratic right to do that, and if it is to change, it should change democratically, and not at the ukase of a Supreme Court.”

Even if Christie is successful in temporarily delaying the effect of the lower state-court ruling, which is likely, once the issue reaches the New Jersey Supreme Court, most observers believe it will rule squarely in favor of marriage equality, given a previous decision by the court (analyzed here) on the issue. New Jersey is one of the few big blue states east of the Mississippi left without marriage equality. Illinois is the other, and there the state legislature seems poised to act in the first half of next year (and possibly sooner) to grant full marriage rights.

Also on the marriage front was the recent announcement that Ted Olson and David Boies, the lawyers who spearheaded the Proposition 8 litigation on behalf of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, in California, have taken a case in the Federal District Court in Virginia, attempting to overturn that state’s ban on gay marriage. The law in Virginia is particularly offensive, not only outlawing same-sex marriage but any other form of recognition that grants rights emblematic of marriage to gay and lesbian unions. That broad sweep is likely to make the law more easily challenged on the grounds that its drafters sought merely to discriminate, punish, and create a second class of citizenship. It also provides Olson and Boies with another legitimate shot at getting the Supreme Court to declare a federal right to same-sex marriage once the case reaches it, possibly as early as its 2014-15 term.

There are still significant challenges for the gay-rights movement. In Congress, for example, the long-stalled Employment Non-Discrimination Act may finally be moving forward, but it may still be hard to pass. That legislation would make it against federal law to discriminate in employment based on sexual orientation—something that most Americans, polling shows, already assume is illegal. It is not, under federal law, although some states and municipalities have outlawed it separately.

But even with that important exception, it seems clear that the gay-rights movement continues to see rapid progress and success—there has been no backlash since the Supreme Court’s ruling. The question on everyone’s mind, even Antonin Scalia’s, no longer seems to be whether there will be gay marriage nationwide. The question now is when.

Richard Socarides is an attorney, political strategist, writer, and longtime gay-rights advocate. He served as White House Special Assistant and Senior Adviser during the Clinton Administration. Follow him on Twitter @Socarides.

Photograph by Josh Reynolds/AP.