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It goes deeper than that. It all started with the socialist movement. That had the same sort of goal- radically change the culture of society by convincing people to voluntarily join them. And it made more sense, at least politically- get the 99% of workers to join up and take the wealth from the 1% of rich capital owners. Should be easy to win that vote in a democracy right? Except that the 1% weren't stupid, so they sent in strikebreakers and police to break up the labor movement. And the workers weren't stupid either, so most of them didn't want to risk joining this radical revolutionary movement to overturn society, especially when most of them were too uneducated to understand wtf the socialists were saying.
So the socialist leaders hit on a new tactic. Start with students and intellectuals at universities, who can be easily persuaded by radical arguments and are relatively free from police oversight. From there, you create a revolutiony vanguard, which can be used to gradually take over all the key institutions of society. Then you enact all the reforms you want, and the people can then be re-educated to appreciate the good you've done, without putting it to a vote, since a fair vote would never be allowed by the capitalist elites.
(edit- I wrote "socialist" in this post, when it probably should have been communist. For me as a modern day American those terms are pretty much interchangeable, but I think to the leftists of the past there was a huge split between the two groups, and it was really the communists pushing the radical left, while they saw the democratic socialists as squishy sellouts to capitalism)
For women it's a bit harder, since they only make up 50% of the population, but the basic idea is the same. Racial and sexual groups at ~10% might seem even harder, but it's still the same process. You don't put it to an election because "human rights are too important to be voted on," and because you'd lose. Instead, first identify an oppressed group, then create an intellectual movement to save them, then push your intellectual group through the elite institutions until you have power without an open election. You'll be proven correct in retrospect, as civil rights, women's rights, and gay marriage are now broadly popular even though they weren't when they were first instituted.
Trans is the latest and most extreme, since they're only like 1% of the population. But I guess it doesn't matter. If anything, to a certain sort of intellectual, that makes the moral crusade even more appealing. And all of these groups share a similar worldview that their ultimate goals can only truly be accomplished by ending capitalism.
This seems to be a common framing, but I generally disagree, as I think it elides the actual dynamics at play.
Perhaps your description is somewhat exaggerated or simplified for effect, but describing the process as one where socialist leaders are masterminding a strategy to take over universities and then society implies a very high degree of coordination that I just don't see. Who are these leaders? Where do they meet? What's their organisational structure? How do they retain such cohesion over decades?
You can certainly find examples of academics talking about this idea, and I'm sure everyone is familiar by now with the infamous "Long march through the institutions" quote, but that's not how culture works. Culture changes institutions, but there's a huge gap between recognising this obvious fact and having a small group of people able to push coherent and sustained radical cultural change over long time scales.
I view the cause and effect as almost completed reverse. Culture changes first, driven in my view by structural changes in society, which prompts people to jump on board. This doesn't happen all at once or in the same way for all segments of society, as there are different structural forces at play depending on your demographics.
I suspect you may be drawing this view from the United States, where there has been a lot more judicial activism on these issues, but is simply inaccurate for most countries that have enacted the changes you're talking about. Gay marriage is a recent example - in every European country I can think of, it was legislated following public debate (sometimes following explicit election commitments), and often with concessions such as the use of conscious votes not typically allowed by political parties. The only exceptions are places like Ireland, where they enacted it via a referendum.
Thanks for the examples, you're right that I shouldn't have been quite so strong in my assertion to imply there were no counterexamples. I would maintain though that the very small number of them (two highlighted out of I think forty? countries in Europe) does demonstrate that is has mostly been via public debate.
Sorry if I'm being obtuse, but I don't understand this argument - legislation is the way in a democratic society for the will of the masses to be implemented, as it's instituted by parliaments comprised of elected representatives. The criticism of human rights frameworks is that they subvert the will of the populous by superseding the legislation enacted by their representatives (e.g. courts such as the European Court of Human Rights overturning legislation enacted by the government).
I feel like we're wandering a bit here into the issue of the legitimacy of government regulation, which my post wasn't addressing - my intent was to point out a pretty clear counterexample to the idea that all the cultural changes in the past few decades have been implemented without being subject to votes.
Briefly, though, whether one approves of it or not, marriage has been regulated by government for centuries (the earliest marriage act in England going back to the 1750s). It's a well defined legal instrument, which is tied in with other well defined legal instruments (such as inheritance, powers of attorney, etc.) As such, the rights (and obligations) of marriage cannot be granted by arbitrary institutions.
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