I think only Western liberals like yourself, Pogue, regard gay marriage as a great societal advance.
To most people around the world, it's somewhere between a joke and an anathema. Who's to say your opinion is better than theirs?
The objectification of its own values by Western liberalism is always amusing. The mercurial affectations of
Western elites are assumed to represent the end point of human moral and intellectual progress, and other, older viewpoints arrogantly dismissed.
It's true to say that the West has been virtually the sole source of the great intellectual and material change in the world since the 17th century. Other cultures have contributed little. But that applies to all non-Western societies, not solely to the Islamic world.