Legal status is terrible standard for whether something is counter culture. Outlawing something is neither necessary nor sufficient to be counterculture. Some legal and cultural boundaries overlap, some are orthogonal.
There are a great many subcultures that would like legal boundaries shifted, and when they care enough they become interest groups participating in the democratic process.
Even the blandest bland blandy that ever blanded is not going to agree with all the laws and societal boundaries being set exactly the way they are. Either that means there's no such thing as a mainstream culture, or we have to understand noisy clashes between subcultures don't make one or the other a counter culture.
I think the way we're discussing that something obviously SUBculture is being confused for a COUNTERculture is an argument in OPs favor that we don't have much (highly visible) counterculture right now.
Subculture vs counterculture makes sense. I'd be curious what counterculture is and how it differentiates from subculture then, if we're not going to measure if institutions exist that are actively trying to outlaw a culture.
A subculture is generally hidden from the mainstream culture. Few are those who display their BDSM subculture in obvious public fashion.
A counterculture is in the face of the mainstream culture, trying to change the cult. It is countering the mainstream. It is activist or, at the least, unabashed with the intention of normalization.
To expand on this, in a democracy-ish country law pretty much ALWAYS lags the cultural reality because legislatures basically never speculatively do things when it comes to cultural issues, they wait for enough people to want something for it to be an issue worth of the political platform. You might get some extremists pushing the envelope by catering to an extreme minority but even then they won't really be far out in front of the pack.
There are a great many subcultures that would like legal boundaries shifted, and when they care enough they become interest groups participating in the democratic process.
Even the blandest bland blandy that ever blanded is not going to agree with all the laws and societal boundaries being set exactly the way they are. Either that means there's no such thing as a mainstream culture, or we have to understand noisy clashes between subcultures don't make one or the other a counter culture.
I think the way we're discussing that something obviously SUBculture is being confused for a COUNTERculture is an argument in OPs favor that we don't have much (highly visible) counterculture right now.