Stephen B. Thornton for NBC News

Pack 215 Cub Scouts recite the Pledge of Allegiance after posting the colors at their pack meeting in the family life center at Eagle Heights Baptist Church on Tuesday in Harrison, Ark.

Cub Scout Pack 215 in rural Arkansas is waiting for a vote that could mean big changes for their tiny outfit.

That’s because of a decision being made Thursday at the national Boy Scouts of America annual meeting that will have ramifications for their pack and other Scout units across the country: whether or not to end its controversial policy banning gay Scouts.

The 1,400 delegates of the National Council will vote on the policy at the BSA meeting in Grapevine, Texas.

More than 70 percent of Boy Scout units are sponsored by a religious group, some that do not want to allow gay youth to join. One is Pack 215, chartered by the Eagle Heights Baptist Church in Harrison, Ark. The church’s pastor has said it will not stay on as sponsor if the policy is changed.

“This would be inconsistent with the biblical values and the essence upon which we operate our ministries,” said Pastor Jay Scribner, who said he would work with the pack to help it decide next steps should the policy change.

Scribner said the decision to pull sponsorship would come “with a heavy heart, but at the same time, with firm biblical convictions.”

The pack first learned of its potential fate in February from Scribner at the yearly Scout Sunday service, after the Boy Scouts initial announcement that it was thinking to include gay adult leaders as well as youth. After a vigorous public debate over the possible change in the longstanding membership guidelines, the private youth organization shelved the decision until the national meeting Thursday.

Stephen B. Thornton for NBC News

Pack 215 Cub Scout Dylan Heimer takes off in a soccer-dribbling contest pitting scouts against parents at their pack meeting Tuesday at Eagle Heights Baptist Church in Harrison, Ark.

 “We are faced with a very hard decision,” Pack 215’s Cubmaster, Carol Gilley, said last week. “This has been weighing heavy on my mind for a long time ... I finally told myself God is bigger than this problem so I'm just giving it over to God and I pray, I pray about it -- that things stay the way they are.”

Some councils, which oversee the Scouting units, have publicly said they will not continue if gay youth are allowed, while others have called for not only youth but adults to be included. Some have also urged a local option – similar to what was done when blacks and women were first allowed in the BSA – that would let each charter partner decide.

For Gilley and others in her pack, talking about homosexuality with their children is a non-starter. Gilley said they refer to the debate as “the issue” around the boys rather than using the word “gay,” and pack secretary, January Studyvin said she is dreading having a “gut-wrenching conversation” with son Daylon, about the fate of the pack.

“We’re a small pack, and our Scout family is just not Scouts it’s an extension of our family … all of our children our close to the other parents,” Studyvin said. “We want to try to keep it going and making it work … keep it going at a personal level … no official awards, no official uniform. But (it) keeps them together and keeps them doing something … we have a lot of boys in our pack that this is all they do.”

Eagle Heights Baptist Church is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Church. One of the SBC leaders, Dr. Frank Page, last week implored the Boy Scouts not to change the policy. But The Church of Jesus Christ Latter-day Saints – the BSA's biggest charter partner-- has given tacit endorsement to the plan; the National Catholic Council on Scouting has yet to take a position. The United Methodist Church did not respond to a NBC News' request for comment.

But BSA spokesman Deron Smith said the proposal was “in line” with the beliefs of most of BSA's major religious chartered groups.

“Some have asserted that the proposed change for youth runs counter to values of and raises concerns among Scouting’s religious chartered organizations,” Smith said. “We are unaware of any major religious chartered organization that believes a youth member simply stating he or she is attracted to the same sex, but not engaging in sexual activity, should make him or her unwelcome in their congregation,” he said.

Ralph Reed, a conservative Christian and lifelong Scout, has helped the BSA arrange conversations with the faith community on the proposal, Smith said.

“We know many have strong religious beliefs about this issue, and the purpose of these discussions was to promote a dialogue based on mutual respect and a shared appreciation of Scouting,” he added.

But he acknowledged that there could be some tough times ahead for the organization founded in 1910.

“Regardless of the results of the vote, the membership policy will not match everyone’s personal preference. The Boy Scouts will undoubtedly face challenges; however, Scouting is bigger than this single issue, and good people can disagree and still work together to accomplish great things for youth,” he said.

But as Pack 215 plans the annual promotion ceremonies for the boys at the end of the month, its future is unclear. If passed, the resolution would take effect Jan. 1, 2014, giving the pack some time to contemplate its next move.

“We're just like one big extended family and we talk and we know for a fact if Boy Scouts decides to change their policy we're going to lose our charter organization,” Gilley said. “We're stressed about that, but what eases my mind about it all ... (is that) we're still going to have this family group.”

If you are a current or former member of the Boy Scouts and would like to share your thoughts on how your troop, pack or council is handling the possibility of a change in the membership policy, you can email the reporter at miranda.leitsinger@msnbc.com. We may use some comments for a follow-up story, so please specify if your remarks can be used and provide your name, hometown, age, Boy Scout affiliation and a phone number.

Related:

Boy Scouts consider ending ban on gay members, leaders

Scouts propose allowing gay scouts, but banning leaders

Mormon church OK with ending Scouts' ban on gay youth

Fred W. McDarrah / Getty Images

One month after the demonstrations at the Stonewall Inn, activist Marty Robinson speaks to a crowd before the first mass march in support of gay rights in New York on July 27, 1969.

From its beginning with riots against police oppression of gays in New York City more than 40 years ago, the fight for gay rights continues today on new fronts: over marriage, therapies to “cure” homosexuals and one of the country's most popular institutions, the Boy Scouts of America.

Next week, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in two landmark, same-sex-marriage cases.

“The swift road to marriage equality has produced millions of conversations around the dinner table and water cooler on the freedom of every American to marry the person they love. It is these conversations that have changed minds. But while we've reached the tipping point on marriage, there's still a ways to go for full LGBT equality, like ending bullying in schools and workplace discrimination,” Kevin Nix, a spokesman for the LGBT advocacy group, Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement.

Here is a look at some of the key moments in American LGBT history:

June 28, 1969: Start of the gay rights movement
The Stonewall Riots begin after police raid a popular unlicensed gay bar, the Stonewall Inn, in New York City's Greenwich Village. The riots, which lasted for days, were triggered by police harassment of gays, according to media reports. This is considered by many to herald the start of the gay rights movement in the U.S.

June 27-28, 1970: First gay pride parades
On the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, the nation's first gay pride parades are held in four cities – New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Fred Sergeant, who attended the NYC parade, reflected in the Village Voice: “Back then, it took a new sense of audacity and courage to take that giant step into the streets of Midtown Manhattan. ... I stayed at the head of the march the entire way, and at one point, I climbed onto the base of a light pole and looked back. I was astonished; we stretched out as far as I could see, thousands of us.” Pride events now are held worldwide every year.

AP

San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk, left, and Mayor George Moscone in April 1977.

Nov. 27, 1978: Assassination of Harvey Milk
Milk became the first openly gay man elected to office in a major U.S. city when he won a seat on San Francisco's Board of Supervisors in early 1978. An outspoken advocate for gay rights, he urged gays to come out and fight for their rights. Milk and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by former supervisor Dan White. But Milk's legacy has lived on and California has designated May 22 as a day of “special significance” in his honor.

1981: The AIDS crisis
Gay advocacy groups form to deal with the crisis gripping the community amid a slow government response to AIDS and the linking of the disease with gay men. Over the years, the AIDS Quilt will form, and some well-known figures will succumb to AIDS, including actor Rock Hudson, or be diagnosed with it, like basketball star Magic Johnson.

Wilfredo Lee / AP

President Bill Clinton answers questions during a news conference in Taylor, Mich., in 1996.

1993: 'Don't ask, don't tell'
President Bill Clinton enacts "don't ask, don't tell," a policy preventing gays from openly serving in the military. Under it, an estimated 13,000 people were expelled from the U.S. Armed Forces. President Barack Obama repealed the policy in 2011. 

1996: Congress bars federal recognition of same-sex marriage (DOMA)
Congress passes the Defense of Marriage Act. Section 3 of the statute bars recognition of same-sex marriage, affecting more than 1,100 provisions of federal laws. It denies gay couples the right to file joint taxes and the protections of the Family Medical and Leave Act, and it blocks surviving spouses from accessing veterans’ benefits, among other things. The Supreme Court will hear a challenge to DOMA on March 27, 2013. Bill Clinton, who signed the legislation, recently came out against the law and asked the Supreme Court to repeal it.

April 30, 1997: 'Yep, I'm gay' -- Degeneres comes out 
Ellen Degeneres comes out on her television show, "Ellen," in an episode that drew in 42 million viewers. Her ratings plunged, which she said was due to a lack of promotion, and the show was pulled the next season, according to The Hollywood Reporter. But she bounced back and she now hosts a popular afternoon talk show, "The Ellen Degeneres Show." Her “coming out” heralded an era of other gay celebrities following suit, and LGBT leading ladies and men have in the last year said they felt it was unnecessary to reveal their sexual preference.

Evan Agostini / Getty Images

Candlelight vigil for slain gay Wyoming student Matthew Shepard.

Oct. 12, 1998: Matthew Shepard's beating death
Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson rob and beat Shepherd, a 21-year-old college student, and tie him to a split-rail fence outside of Laramie, Wyo. He dies on Oct. 12, less than a week after the attack. The murder, for which the pair are each serving two consecutive life sentences, inspired "The Laramie Project," a play and later film about Laramie in the year after the murder, and federal hate crimes legislation approved in 2009 that bears Shepard's name.

2000: Boy Scouts can ban gays
The Supreme Court rules that the Boy Scouts of America can bar gay Scouts and leaders from membership, saying that as a private youth organization it has the right to do so. Under increasing pressure in recent years to change the policy, the BSA has said it will hold a vote on the controversial membership guidelines in May.

Toby Talbot / AP

Lawyers Susan Murray, left, and Beth Robinson brought a lawsuit before the Vermont Supreme Court that led to the court's decision on same-sex marriage in 2000.

2000: First state to allow same-sex civil unions
Vermont becomes the first state to allow same-sex couples to join their lives via civil unions. The state approved same-sex marriage in 2009.

2003: Anti-sodomy law struck down
The Supreme Court strikes down a Texas anti-sodomy law, reversing an earlier decision made in another case 17 years earlier that Justice Anthony Kennedy said “demeans the lives of homosexual persons.” Gays are ''entitled to respect for their private lives," Kennedy said for the court, according to The New York Times. ''The state cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime.'' 

2004: State same-sex marriage bans
A dozen states pass constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage. The amendments become a popular method to attempt to block legislative acts and judicial decisions on the issue.

Rich Pedroncelli / AP

Jeff Barr, left, places a wedding ring on Wes Wilkinson at the Yolo County clerk's office in Woodland, Calif. on June 16, 2008. They were among the first gay couples to wed in Yolo County after the California Supreme Court overturned a ban on same-sex marriages.

2008: California's Prop. 8 nixes gay marriage
California’s Supreme Court rules that gays and lesbians should be allowed to wed. For a short time that year, some 18,000 same-sex couples tie the knot in the Golden State. But in November, voters approved a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage (Proposition 8) after a hard-fought, multimillion-dollar campaign – one of the most expensive on this issue. The Supreme Court will hear a challenge to Prop. 8 on March 26, 2013.

Pete Souza / White House via EPA

In an interview with Robin Roberts of ABC's "Good Morning America," on May 9, 2012, President Barack Obama spoke in support of gay marriage for the first time as president.

May 9, 2012: First sitting president to support same-sex marriage
Barack Obama becomes the first sitting U.S. president to back marriage for gay and lesbian couples. It marked a reversal from his 2008 campaign, when he said he opposed same-sex marriage but favored civil unions as an alternative. His announcement came one day after voters in North Carolina passed a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage as well as civil unions for gay and lesbian couples.

Nov. 4, 2012: In a first, gay marriage wins at the ballot box
Voters in Maine approve same-sex marriage in the first vote brought by supporters, while voters in Maryland and Washington uphold state legislation allowing gays and lesbians to wed. And in Minnesota, voters reject – for just the second time nationwide – a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

Related:

Same-sex marriage's big day in court: What's at stake?

Once 'inconceivable,' Republican leaders sign pro-gay marriage brief

Even before Supreme Court rules, gay marriage battles rage in the states

Supporters of same-sex marriage hope for a boost this week when dozens of high-profile Republicans, many no longer in office, submit their legal argument to the Supreme Court on why gays and lesbians should be allowed to wed, bucking their party's platform in a move that one who had a change of heart on the issue said would “strengthen our nation as a whole.”

More than 80 Republicans are signatories to the "friend of the Court" brief to be filed in the case over Proposition 8, a California law banning same-sex marriage, according to the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which is waging the legal battle against the law. The nation’s high court will hear arguments in the case in late March. The New York Times first reported on the brief.

Credit: Stephen Lam / Reuters file

Meg Whitman, HP's chief executive officer and president, at a meeting on Jan. 16. She says she has had a change of heart on the issue of gay marriage.

One scholar described the effort as “inconceivable” just two years ago, and one of the signers, former California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, said in a blog that she had changed her mind on the issue, “like several others who have either sought or held public office, including President Obama.”

“As the Republican nominee for governor of California three years ago, I supported the majority of Californians who voted for Proposition 8 and against same sex marriage,” Whitman, president and chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard Co., said in a separate statement. “After careful review and reflection since then, I have come to embrace civil marriage for same sex couples.”

She noted in her blog that same-sex families “should have equal access to the benefits of marriage” and later added: “Establishing a constitutional right of marriage equality in California will strengthen our nation as a whole.”

Six former governors, including Jon Huntsman of Utah and Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey, and members of President George W. Bush’s cabinet, such as former Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, four former and two current members of Congress signed the brief, AFER said. Members of the Mitt Romney and Sen. John McCain presidential campaigns also signed.

The brief will be filed Thursday, according to the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights group. Additional names were still being added to it, said AFER, which noted one of its lead attorneys on the case was a conservative, former U.S. Solicitor General Ted Olson, who argued for Bush before the Supreme Court after the disputed 2000 presidential election. 

Michael Klarman, a Harvard Law School professor and author of “From the Closet to the Altar: Courts, Backlash, and the Struggle for Same-Sex Marriage,” called it an “incredibly important development” and noted the brief could influence Justice Anthony Kennedy, whom he said was the swing vote on gay marriage.

“The fact that more and more Republicans are coming out in favor of gay marriage simply confirms how dramatic the shift in public opinion has been -- and that is a fact that likely is of great significance to Justice Kennedy,” he wrote to NBC News in an email. “Even two years ago, it would have been inconceivable that this many prominent Republicans would have been willing to buck their party platform on the issue.”

In an article last week, former Republican presidential candidate Huntsman wrote that as governor he had backed civil unions but now was supporting marriage for gays and lesbians.

“The party of Lincoln should stand with our best tradition of equality and support full civil marriage for all Americans,” he wrote. “This is both the right thing to do and will better allow us to confront the real choice our country is facing: a choice between the Founders’ vision of a limited government that empowers free markets, with a level playing field giving opportunity to all, and a world of crony capitalism and rent-seeking by the most powerful economic interests.”

Huntsman’s argument echoed parts of the legal brief, which The Times said made the case that allowing same-sex marriage would promote conservative ideals of limited government and individual freedom as well as provide the children of gay couples a two-parent home.

The legal brief was dismissed by the National Organization for Marriage, which on Monday pledged $500,000 to defeat Republican lawmakers supporting any law to allow same-sex marriage in Minnesota, a state considering such legislation.

“None of these people are actively in politics. They are not running for office because they know … supporting same-sex marriage will end your career if you’re a Republican,” said Brian Brown, NOM's president. “There’s overwhelming support for traditional marriage in the Republican party, that’s why it’s part of the party platform, and any attempt by the establishment to redefine marriage and redefine what it means to be a conservative will mean the death of the Republican party.”

But LGBT groups said the brief was further proof of changing attitudes on the issue. Marc Solomon, national campaign director for Freedom to Marry who saw the brief, said the list included Republicans going back to the Reagan administration.

He noted Meg Whitman’s new position represented a “significant shift,” while others who had signed, such as Republican Representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida and Richard Hanna of New York, have also sponsored federal legislation that would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which bars federal recognition of same-sex marriage.

Steve Schmidt, who worked on the 2004 Bush re-election effort and as chief strategist on McCain’s 2008 presidential bid, has been a “powerful supporter” of same-sex marriage, Solomon said.

“I think most importantly, it’s the broad swath of leaders” on the list, Solomon told NBC News. “We’re no longer just dealing with … one or two ‘mavericks’ who are willing to sort of stick their neck out. …

“This is a big swath of Republicans, of mainstream Republicans, who view the freedom to marry as part of their conservatism rather than something separate from it.”

The Supreme Court will also hear arguments in late March on Section 3 of DOMA, which the Obama administration has encouraged the justices to strike down. In its argument, the federal government noted that Proposition 8 and similar measures in other states was evidence that anti-gay discrimination remained a major problem.

Related:
US asks Supreme Court to strike down law denying benefits to same-sex couples
Supreme Court to take up same-sex marriage issue

Jacquelyn Martin / AP

Pascal Tessier, 16, center left, a Scout, and his brother Lucien Tessier, 20, who had earned the rank of Eagle Scout, pose for a portrait with their parents, Oliver Tessier, left, and Tracie Felker, at their home in Kensington, Maryland, on Monday. The two Tessier boys enjoyed Cub Scouts, progressed to Boy Scouts, and continued to thrive there even as many in their troop became aware that each boy was gay.

Published at 4:45 a.m. ET: Special prayers have been urged, petitions handed in, phone calls placed and pleas for a delay made, all over a decision on an issue that has rocked one of America’s most popular youth organizations: whether or not gays can join the Boy Scouts.

A decision by national Scout leaders is expected Wednesday. Some fear an unwanted new era, while others are welcoming what they believe is an overdue change that comes amid other recent gains for the LGBT rights movement nationwide.

President Barack Obama has twice weighed in on the issue, earlier this week affirming his support for including gays in the Boy Scouts of America, while former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum has called for an end to what he labelled the “war on Scouts.”

“The Boy Scouts are a fundamental part of this nation’s moral bedrock and they are one of our great cultural institutions. We have trusted them to grow and develop our young men for over a century,” Zach Wahls, an Eagle Scout and son of a lesbian couple campaigning for gays to be included, said Tuesday. “They’re a big deal, and that is why this proposed change is so critically important.”

Advocates on both sides of the issue have stepped up their campaigns ahead of the BSA's final decision: They’ve encouraged their backers to make their voices heard through a phone-in and email deluge. A conservative group, the Family Research Council, said that it and 41 other groups ran a newspaper ad on Monday asking the BSA not to change the policy, and some conservative religious groups have urged their supporters to join in prayer to ask the board not to accept gays.

Related: 'Gravely distressed': Religion looms large over Boy Scouts decision on gays 

John Makely / NBC News file

Ryan Andresen had recently completed the requirements to earning his Eagle Scout award, including his final project of building a "tolerance wall" for victims of bullying like himself, but his Scoutmaster would not sign off on honoring him with the Boy Scouts' highest ranking because he is gay, his mother said. Here, Ryan holds an Eagle Scout pin that was sent to him from a supporter.

A coalition of Boy Scouts councils representing some 540,000 youth -- or 20 percent of the organization’s 2.6 million active Scouts -- asked the national organization on Monday to delay a decision on ending the controversial policy, saying it was concerned “about the pace at which such actions are being taken,” according to a statement posted on the website of the Utah-based Great Salt Lake Council.   

Roger “Sing” Oldham, spokesman for the conservative Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee, said the outpouring of feedback on the issue came as no surprise to him since his group felt the BSA had not allowed opponents of the change to weigh in on the proposal, which was announced just a little more than one week ago and was being reviewed by national leaders.

Oldham said he had spoken with some troop leaders, pastors and parents who have expressed concern about the way forward if gays are allowed, particularly those units that will try to maintain the ban locally as would be permitted under the proposal. For more than two-thirds of Scouting groups affiliated with religious bodies, faith plays a large role in the private youth organization.

“When local chapters begin realizing the financial liability that they face if they exercise the local option then … they’re going to have to say we either fall into step or we have just to end the relationship,” he said. “There’ll be attrition over time and, you know, the Scouts will have permanently altered the face of who they are into the future.”

'Feeling of shame'
Some have said they will even leave the organization over the issue.

Angela Russell, who has an 11-year-old in the Boy Scouts and a 9-year-old in the Cub Scouts, said that if the BSA allows gays, particularly as leaders, they would be “breaking their own highly held codes to be ‘morally straight’ and to commit to such principles via oaths and promises.”

If the ban is lifted, “I must remove my boys from this program. My heart truly aches to think of it,” Russell, of Auburn, Wash., wrote in a letter she emailed to NBC News. “However, to leave them in a program that goes against its own teachings would be worse.”

But another mother, of a Boy Scout and two Cub Scouts, said she had “been torn for years” over the policy since her own mother is a lesbian and allowing gays would be a relief.

“I am very happy about the things my children have learned and the tools they have been given from the program,” Gina Beaudry, 37, of Raleigh, N.C., who will be the Cub Scoutmaster for her sons pack this year, wrote in an email to NBC News. 

“To have this ban lifted would take away some of the feeling of shame I feel for the organization that has been so beneficial to my children. I would hate to see any child or parent not feel like they were welcome in the program.”

Related: After years of heartache, gay Scouts and supporters react warily over proposal to lift ban

The proposed policy change comes just seven months after the BSA said it was sticking with its ban following a confidential two-year review.

That review was announced months after Jennifer Tyrrell was dismissed from her post as leader of her son’s Tiger Cubs den because she is a lesbian, and a few months before California teen Ryan Andresen was denied his Eagle award because he is gay.

Both cases made national headlines, roiling the private youth organization. Some critics pointed to declining membership numbers as a sign that families were being turned off over the issue. The controversy also prompted a few hundred Eagle Scouts to turn in their hard-earned regalia in protest of the ban, which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld in 2000.

Wahls believes the Boy Scouts will lift the exclusion of gays and rejects the idea it will cause any “mass exodus.”

“We don’t think that that’s going to be a problem at all and think that this move will definitely bolster Scouting for future generations,” he said, later adding, “Our generation has embraced LGBT rights, and like all things, Scouting should not be playing catch up, it should be blazing the trail.”

Related: 

Gay teen denied Eagle Scout: 'Change is happening' over Boy Scouts anti-gay policy

Eagle Scouts return badges to protest policy banning gays

Boy Scouts: We're keeping policy banning gays 

If you are a current or former member of the Boy Scouts and would like to share your thoughts on how your troop, pack or council is handling the possibility of a change in the membership policy, you can email the reporter at miranda.leitsinger@msnbc.com. We may use some comments for a follow-up story, so please specify if your remarks can be used and provide your name, hometown, age, Boy Scout affiliation and a phone number.

When President Barack Obama noted “our gay brothers and sisters” and their struggle for civil rights in his inaugural speech on Monday, he was making history: He was the first president to cite the LGBT community during the keynote presidential address.

A NBC News review of past presidential inaugural speeches turned up no prior mentions of gays and lesbians, though Obama and former President Bill Clinton did note the struggle for gay rights -- primarily the bid to serve openly in the military -- in State of the Union speeches.

“Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law. For if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well,” Obama said Monday. 

The president’s comments drew praise from LGBT rights groups and advocates.

One, columnist Dan Savage, commented on Obama's grouping together of key moments from the women's rights, Civil Rights and gay rights movements: “Seneca Falls, Selma, Stonewall - thank you for that, Mr. President.”

Fred Sainz, of the Human Rights Campaign, told NBC News: “It’s a totally different game when the president of the United States is on your side … this president has said things about LGBT people that many of our own families are either not able or not willing to say.”

But Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage, which has spearheaded votes banning gay marriage in many states, took exception to Obama linking the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City -- which launched the gay rights movement -- to the Selma voting rights march in the Civil Rights era.

“Same-sex marriage is not a civil right,” he told NBC News, noting that millions of Americans had voted to ban it. “To try and compare in any way the attempt to redefine marriage with the Civil Rights movement is simply false. I think that the president’s forgetting about the most important group affected by this and their civil rights, and that’s children having the civil right to have both a mom and a dad.” 

Obama has been incorporating LGBT issues more in his speeches and public addresses since he came out in support of same-sex marriage last May, Sainz said. He had used the “Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall” line in a May 14, 2012, address to graduating students at the Barnard College Commencement Ceremony in New York.

He has also cited gay rights in at least three State of the Union addresses: In 2010, he used it to launch his bid to repeal the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy under which openly-gay and lesbian members of the armed forces could be kicked out of service because of their sexual preference; and in 2011, he noted the ending of that policy in the coming year. In 2012, he again said sexual preference was not a barrier to anyone serving in the military.

Clinton made a single mention of the LGBT community in his 2000 State of the Union address, when he cited the Matthew Shepard case. Shepard was killed in Wyoming in October 1998 by two men who kidnapped him, beat him and left him tied to a split-rail fence because he was gay.

But Clinton, who guided “don’t ask, don’t tell” through Congress, did not mention the LGBT community in his inaugural speeches.

“We just weren’t at that point in history, we just weren’t there yet,” Sainz said, adding that Obama's "speech is definitely reflective of the times we are in.”

Those times include upcoming U.S. Supreme Court arguments over same-sex marriage and upcoming legislative battles in Illinois and Rhode Island over whether gays and lesbians can wed. The high court will also hear a case challenging a federal law that bans providing benefits to federal workers whose spouses are of the same sex.

“The importance of those sentences (said by Obama) are that our fight is still very much ahead of us,” Sainz said.

NBC's Jack Styczynski contributed to this report.

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Obama tells nation our journey is not complete

Updated 4:50 p.m. ET- President Barack Obama endorsed the right of same-sex couples to marry on Wednesday, a landmark pronouncement made in light of mounting pressure from gay rights advocates.

Obama became the first U.S. president to back the right of gay and lesbian couples to marry, a reversal from views expressed during the 2008 campaign, when he said he opposed same-sex marriage but favored civil unions as an alternative.

Related: The ‘evolution’ of Obama’s stance on gay marriage

Obama told ABC News that, after reflection, he had "concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married."

Related: Romney calls marriage 'tender' issue, skirts Obama remarks

In making his announcement, Obama completes what he had described as an “evolution” in his views on this issue, hastened by growing fervor this week involving gay rights. The growing pressure was capped Tuesday by North Carolina voters’ approval of a constitutional amendment banning not only same-sex marriages, but civil unions for gay and lesbian couples, as well.

Obama’s shift not only speaks to a broad swath of the electorate, which has exhibited increasing acceptance of same-sex marriage in opinion polls, but also gay and lesbian voters who compose a core part of Obama’s base, and have been major fundraisers for his re-election.

ABC News

President Barack Obama appears in an interview with ABC News on Wednesday, speaking in support of gay marriage. "It is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married," the president said.

Obama explained that he had hesitated in fully supporting same-sex marriage because he thought civil unions would be sufficient.

"I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that 'Don't Ask Don't Tell' is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married," he told ABC.

The president had found himself under increasing pressure this week to state his position unequivocally after Vice President Joe Biden voiced support for same-sex marriage.

"I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women, and heterosexual men and women marrying another are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties," Biden said on NBC’s "Meet the Press." "And quite frankly, I don't see much of a distinction beyond that."

While the White House emphasized that Biden’s position wasn’t representative of the entire administration, Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s pronouncement Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” in support of same-sex marriage added to pressure on the president.

“I have no update on the president's personal views,” press secretary Jay Carney said repeatedly at Monday’s White House press briefing in reference to the president’s self-styled “evolution” on gay marriage.

As a result, Obama has risked fallout among his political base. The Washington Post reported this week that gay and liberal donors had threatened to withhold financial support for the president or a super PAC due to his refusal to sign an executive order barring discrimination of gays and lesbians in federal contracting.

And Obama was expected, too, to encounter frustration at a major Hollywood fundraiser this week at the home of actor George Clooney.

The overwhelming approval, too, of the measure, which Obama had opposed, in North Carolina -- a key swing state -- heightened speculation that the president might address the issue.

RELATED: North Carolina approves ban on same-sex marriage

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney re-iterated his opposition to both same-sex marriage and civil unions on Tuesday.

"I have the same view on marriage that I had when I was governor and that I've expressed many times," he said following the president's announcement. "I believe marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman."

Earlier, he told KDVR-TV in Denver: "I do not favor marriage between people of the same gender, and I do not favor civil unions if they are identical to marriage other than by name ... My view is the domestic partnership benefits, hospital visitation rights, and the like are appropriate but that the others are not."

Obama has faced tremendous pressure throughout his administration to advance gay rights.

Among his earliest acts as president included signing an executive order extending benefits to federal employees in same-sex partnerships in 2009. Obama also ordered the government to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act -- the 1996 laws allowing states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages in other states -- in court.

The administration’s crowning achievement on gay rights came more methodically, though -- sometimes to the frustration of advocates for same-sex rights.

Obama signed the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” -- the military’s ban on openly gay or lesbian service members -- into law in December 2010. But the repeal came after months of legislative wrangling, and the president’s refusal to sign a simple order to make the change. And even after Obama signed the law, the implementation took months.

FIRST READ: Is Obama's gay marriage stance all about suburban voters?

Same-sex marriage is hardly the hot-button issue it was compared to the last decade, though. Support for it now eclipses opposition; 49 percent of Americans said that favor allowing gays and lesbians to marry, according to the March NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, while 40 percent oppose it. (In October 2009, 49 percent opposed same-sex marriages, while 41 percent supported them.)

Opinion has shifted especially among independent voters, who back marriage rights 46 percent to 37 percent. About three in 10 Republicans said they, too, support same-sex marriage.

However, of the 18 states making composing the “toss-up” or “lean” categories in NBC’s battleground map, 10 have banned same-sex marriage and civil unions outright, either by constitutional amendment or statute. Just two -- Iowa and New Hampshire -- have legalized gay marriage outright, while other states operate in more nebulous space when it comes to gay and lesbian couples.