Segal was in the Stonewall Inn when the police raided it, like they often did.

Only that night, for the first time, the gay men in the bar stood up against police aggression. Their rebellion sparked days of riots and Stonewall became the signature start of America's gay rights movement.

Segal, 62, went on to become a prominent gay rights activist. Two weeks ago, on Inauguration Day, he heard President Barack Obama's speech at home on television.

"We the people, declare today that the most evident of truths --- that all of us are created equal -- is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall, just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone, to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth." Segal sat up, chills went down his back at the mention of Stonewall.

He'd been beaten, arrested, called the worst of names. Now the president was equating gay rights to women's rights, to civil rights. He was pledging to make things right.

It was thrilling, too, for Jones, 58. He worked with Harvey Milk, one of America's first openly gay politicians, who served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors until his assassination in 1978. Jones was also the man behind the AIDS Quilt, which documented the lives of thousands who perished in the epidemic.

"I am kind of beside myself. I have to pinch myself sometimes," he said. "I never thought I would live long enough to see this. Never. Ever."

He pointed to electoral victories in November in which voters in Washington, Maryland and Maine approved same-sex marriage. Six other states -- Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, New Hampshire and New York -- and the District of Columbia already recognized same-sex marriage. Gay couples can even marry now in the National Cathedral.

In Wisconsin, voters elected the country's first openly gay U.S. senator, Tammy Baldwin. Shortly after, Richard Blanco became the first openly gay poet to read at a presidential inauguration. The Boy Scouts of America said it was reconsidering its anti-gay policy. Fast food chain Chick-fil-A, under fire in July for its financial support of anti-gay groups, stopped making those donations. Marriott Corp., founded by Mormons, joined a coalition of big businesses in fighting the Defense of Marriage Act.

On Tuesday, Obama announced an immigration reform plan that includes protections for same-sex bi-national couples. The next day, the Internet was on fire with objections to anti-gay comments made by San Francisco 49ers player Chris Culver. Culver apologized in yet another example of how much more tolerant America has become of gay Americans.

All this comes after Obama publicly endorsed same-sex marriage in May. The year before, the U.S. military repealed its "don't ask, don't tell" policy, allowing gay men and women to serve openly.

Jones credits much of the progress to Obama, anointed by Newsweek magazine as "the first gay president," after his endorsement of same-sex marriage.

Obama's election in 2008 was a milestone -- for black America and for gay America -- Jones said. But there was more to the story.

On the same day that Obama was elected in 2008, voters in California passed Proposition 8, which effectively banned same-sex marriages after the state's high court had ruled them legal.

"It was a slap in the face for younger generations," Jones said.

That was also a year that Sean Penn won an Oscar for his performance as Harvey Milk. Jones said he believes the passage of Prop 8 along with the celluloid version of Milk's story helped galvanize a new generation of people to campaign for gay rights.

He has been working to sustain the momentum. Critical, he said, are the same-sex marriage hearings in the Supreme Court in late March. Jones is helping plan a day of action on March 25, the anniversary of the arrival of civil rights marchers from Selma at the Alabama state capitol in Montgomery.

"How long? Not long, because no lie can live forever," the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said in Selma.

That's how Jones looks at today's LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) movement. "If someone had told me in 1972 I would be campaigning for joining the military or for marriage, I'd be laughing," he said. "Now I really believe I am going to see us win our political battle."

Progress, but not finished