AFAIK, it seems that the Stonewall riots, which stemmed from the police raid of a gay bar in Greenwich Village back in 1969, was really the catalyst for the modern gay rights movement in the United States (if not the world at large).
Before then, it was taboo to even discuss homosexuality in public life, much less acknowledge one's self as homosexual. The best someone could hope for was to keep it secret (if even an open secret), and at worst it was blackmail material. After the riots, the issue was thrust into the American mainstream. While the public at large obvious didn't become accepting overnight, it set in motion what we now know as the modern LGBT rights movement and helped to organize the gay community. On the flip side, anti-gay rhetoric also became ready ammunition in the budding religious right movement in the 1970's.
So what if the riots had never happened, and the bar's patrons, like many nights before, had just buckled down and waited for the police to leave. Without a big catalyst, how does the gay rights movement (if it happens at all), as well public perception of homosexuality, develop without this defining moment? Would something else just take it's anyway, due to the underlying conditions, or could the pre-Stonewall status quo have lasted for decades?
Thoughts?