Men danced with men, often for the first time in their lives.

Few bars in New York, even gay bars, permitted same-sex dancing.

Change does come.

The spirit that emerged outside a Mafia-run bar in 1969 became the pulse of the gay community and inspired not just an annual parade but ways to express gay pride in individual lives.Stonewall happens every day.

Masquerading in the attire of the opposite sex was a criminal offense, except on Halloween.

People are beginning to realise,” the doorman of the Stonewall Inn observed a few days after the riot, “that no matter how ‘nelly’ or how ‘fem’ a homosexual is, you can only push them so far.

When Clinton took office, members of that community still faced a host of legal and cultural barriers. Sodomy laws banned same-sex acts, even in the privacy of one’s bedroom, in more than half of the country’s states plus the nation’s capital.

We are following the blacks ... And we will follow, entering, perhaps, the same time as women.