There were no openly gay policemen, public school teachers, doctors, or lawyers. When Hollywood made a film with a major homosexual character, the character was either killed or killed himself. No television show had any identifiably gay characters.

Not one law - federal, state, or local - protected gay men or women from being fired or denied housing.

At the end of the 1960s, homosexual sex was illegal in every state but Illinois. It was only a few decades ago - a very short time in historical terms - that the situation of gay men and lesbians was radically different from what it is today. In Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution ( public library), David Carter contextualizes the remarkable delta of progress that the Stonewall Riots precipitated: On that June morning, equality for all seemed a distant but necessary dream - a dream that finally became a reality. Known as the Stonewall Riots, these protests are commonly considered the tipping point at which the LGBT community coalesced into political cohesion and the birth of the modern gay rights movement. In the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, violent protests and street demonstrations took over the streets of New York after a police raid of Stonewall Inn, the now-legendary Greenwich Village gay bar.