The responses of Governors Pence and Hutchinson to the outrage caused by their anti-lgbt "religious freedom" laws have been telling.
Governor Pence argued that the law should be acceptable because President Clinton signed a law which he (incorrectly) thinks is similar in 1993. Governor Hutchinson defended the Arkansas variant by saying, "This is a bill that in ordinary times would not be controversial, but these are not ordinary times."
Both of these defenses reveal something about the way they think about social change. Governor Pence's comment suggests that he assumes that if something was acceptable in 1993, it must still be acceptable today. Governor Hutchinson's comment suggests that he sees the past as "ordinary" and the present as a deviation from the ordinary.
This view of social norms is in stark contrast to the way people view progress in other areas. Nobody views mobile phones as a temporary deviation from the use of "ordinary" phones. Nobody would argue that the Higgs Boson doesn't exist by citing to a study from 1993 speculating that it didn't exist. In other fields of knowledge, everybody accepts that we learn more and get smarter as time moves on, but in this particular field, we have a split between social conservatives and social liberals.
Social liberals believe that, like in every other field, our understanding of social subjects continually advances. We view civil rights issues as being about the pace at which we adapt our understanding. We understand social liberals as being people who want society to move quickly and social conservatives as people who want society to move slowly.
Social conservatives do not see social understanding as inevitably progressing. They view these issues not in terms of how fast society should change, but how far society should be allowed to deviate from the right path. In their view, there are not more and less socially advanced times, there are more and less permissive times. What we view as social progress, they view as permitting deviation from the fixed path of righteousness. In their view, some day, we will return to "ordinary times" and they will be seen as heroes for having resisted the temptation to jump on this fad.
The thing is, even a superficial examination of history should resolve this split. When you look back at the issues the social liberals and conservatives have disagreed on, it is always clear that the social liberals had it right. In fact, the social liberals of the past were generally more socially conservative than even the social conservatives of today. History marches on, always moving to new ground. Once history moves past a social norm, it does not return to it. There are no "ordinary times", there are the past, the present and the future and we always move into the future.