One thing I'd argue is that over the 200-or-whatever years of capitalist history, there have been few episodes where social repression was challenged as forcefully or as successfully as during the 30 or so postwar years when capitalists were forced into a market-stifling compromise settlement. The neoliberal era that followed has witnessed more liberal norms, but also a very palpable crackdown - or clampdown, as someone sang once - against disorder and defiance. Just look at New York City.
It seems to me that the social liberalization of the neoliberal era has represented a stabilizing or normalizing incorporation of the "disorderly" movements of the previous postwar era, or at least of their goals. Don't get me wrong, that's a good thing. But the boundaries of those widened norms are now policed more stringently than they were in, say, 1965-85. In my suburban high school, we were often surprised to hear how permissively teenagers had been treated by the school or the police in the 70's.
History moves along staggered and overlapping tracks, so it shouldn't be assumed that all things seen in one era "go together." For example, Barney Frank can be an out member of Congress more because of the legacy of the liberation movements of the 60's and 70's than because of the alleged libertarianism of the neoliberal era. By contrast, the gay milieu generally has become much more conformist, and that's definitely a product of the neoliberal era.
SA