In the next few days, the Boy Scouts of America is expected to announce whether it plans to change its longstanding national policy against openly gay members.

Many parents of Scouts have voiced their concerns, saying homosexuality goes against the teachings of their faith. But many others find the ban on gays out of sync with the ideals of scouting -- and of the nation as a whole.

The Boy Scouts controversy perhaps illustrates where America stands on gay rights.

Divided, still. But many more Americans empathize with gay Americans today. Many of those who have been crusading for decades to win more rights now say they have reached a precipice.

Polls show the public has gradually become more accepting of same-sex marriage, for instance. More Americans favor it in 2013 than oppose, according to the Pew Research Center.

Veteran activists feel America has reached a watershed moment in its writing of gay rights history. Defeats now -- whether with the Boy Scouts or in upcoming Supreme Court decisions on same-sex marriage -- would break with the momentum that has been steadily building for many months.

"Watershed? No, it's a tidal wave," said Mark Segal, a longtime activist who is often called the dean of gay journalism -- he is publisher of the Philadelphia Gay News.

Segal and other activists liken their struggle for civil rights to the battles against sexism and racism, except their movement has yet to yield laws that afford them the full protections and rights given to women and racial minorities.

But they are hopeful, given the progress in recent months, that they will see the fruition of their struggles in their lifetime.

San Francisco activist Cleve Jones said in all his 40 years of work, he has never seen movement like this.

"2012 was an extraordinary year," he said. "We've begun 2013 with a remarkable and moving statement. The burst of progress has been sustained."

Big things are about to happen, he said, including the Supreme Court decisions.

He was confident the court would rule in favor of gay rights.

"The opposition is just melting away," Jones said about public opinion on homosexuality. "We have reached the hearts and minds of the American people."

There is, he said, no turning back the clock.

A nod to Stonewall

Segal was 18 when he left home in Philadelphia for New York. He moved there because he was gay and wanted to be in a more accepting environment.

It was a time when the American Psychiatric Association regarded homosexuality as a mental disorder. Some were subjected to lobotomies as cures. Being gay could result in a life sentence: 20 states had laws that deemed homosexuality a reason for imprisonment.

One June 28, 1969, one month after he arrived in the city, Segal found himself on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village, the heart of the gay community.

It was illegal then for bars to serve alcohol to gay customers. It was illegal to be in drag, or for same-sex couples to dance together.

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.