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Gay marriage seems to be the least zero-sum of the progressive causes (arguably deliberately selected to be that way) and it's much younger than the drive for racial or class based redistribution.
I think this may be precisely why it was a turning point. The tactics used to win this battle - "born this way," "how does two loving men/women getting married and getting [marriage rights] affect you?" - were so successful in large part because it was so close to zero-sum. But once that battle was won, the same activists applied the same tactics to other things which were not nearly so close to zero-sum (insisting that MTF transwomen be treated exactly the same as women in every context is the most obvious example, but smaller scale examples in things like representation in fiction also count), which resulted in significant push back, which resulted in the activists take the "beatings will continue until morale improves" approach.
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Yes but afterwards the activist industrial complex spilled into all the other causes. And they managed to instill their monoculture in the tech giants for almost a decade. Now of course the workers there are scared because of the layoffs and are less politically active - as the obedient drones should be, but do you remember the first Trump admin?
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