Gay Rights Backers See History in Obama's Stand At a birthplace of the gay rights movement, patrons of New York City's Stonewall Inn said they felt like they were living history. In Wyoming, the mother of a man beaten to death because of his sexuality said words couldn't express her gratitude. An 82-year-old photographer who chronicled protests in the 1960s called it "a new dawn." President Barack Obama's declaration Wednesday that he supports gay marriage may have lacked the urgency of Kennedy's 1963 push for the Civil Rights Act, or the force and finality of the Emancipation Proclamation, but it was still being greeted as a major milestone among people who care about gay rights. It signifies a history-changing moment when a president finally says, 'I'm on your side.' It's a critical moment," said Stacy Lentz, a co-owner of the Stonewall, a reincarnated version of the unlicensed gay bar in Manhattan's West Village that was the site of riots following a police raid in 1969. Just how big of a moment remains to be seen. While public opinion polls show an increasing number of Americans are receptive of gay marriage, and accepting of homosexuality in general, the movement hasn't fared well at the ballot box. On Tuesday, North Carolina voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman. Still, at mileposts and bastions in the struggle, Obama's words were being welcomed. Holly Puterbaugh, 65, and her partner, Lois Farnham, were among the three Vermont same-sex couples who sued the state in 1997 after they were denied a marriage license. Their lawsuit led to the 1999 court decision that made Vermont the first state to recognize same-sex civil unions. Back then, Puterbaugh never would have believed a president would someday back same-sex marriage, she said in a phone interview Thursday. "We've come a lot further a lot faster than I thought we would," she said. In '99, civil union was considered the most outrageously liberal thing going. Now it's the conservative fallback. "That tells me people are looking, they are thinking, they are starting to really examine this as a true issue," she said. Another couple in that landmark lawsuit, Nina Beck and Stacy Jolles, had also viewed same-sex marriage as a romantic ideal, and maybe a legal longshot, when they took up the fight. Now, things have changed. "When we went to the city hall in South Burlington to ask for a marriage license, it was very simply the first step on what we thought would be a very long road, but we had to take the first step," Beck said. I don't think either of us ever imagined that we necessarily would be, you know, 15 or 16 years later in the position of hearing the president of the United States come out in support of same-sex marriage. But it's an amazing and wondrous thing that, here we are. To social conservatives and some church leaders, the debate over gay marriage is partly about government intrusion on an institution that, at its core, is based in the deepest religious traditions. To others, it's about eradicating hate.