Forty years ago, the patrons of the Stonewall Inn risked everything, and their courage ignited the modern GLBT rights movement.

This month, as we commemorate the Stonewall uprising at gay Pride celebrations around the world, perhaps we should also ask ourselves what we’re willing to risk for equality.

The events at the Stonewall Inn, a New York City bar, began in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969. At the time, to be “queer” was to be officially classified as both mentally ill and criminal.

Acts of intimacy between consenting adults in their own homes were illegal in 48 states. GLBT applicants were automatically disqualified from federal employment and service in the military. People who wore clothing deemed inappropriate for their gender could be arrested.

Bars were frequently our only havens at the same time that liquor laws often forbade serving alcohol to gays. Bars known to have GLBT clientele were raided repeatedly by police.

But when officers arrived at the Stonewall Inn for what was supposed to be a routine raid, the patrons did something GLBT people rarely did: They fought back – risking their lives and their freedom.

They blocked police from loading prisoners into a paddy wagon and stopped the raid. That resistance led to six nights of upheaval.

The people of Stonewall weren’t the first to battle police harassment. That honor goes to the transgender patrons of San Francisco’s Compton’s Cafeteria, who fought back in 1966.

Stonewall didn’t mark the start of GLBT activism. As early as the 1920s, a few people tried to organize for change. The homophile movement made progress in the 1950s and early 1960s. But Stonewall touched off something new.

“Suddenly new possibilities and expectations were in the air,” historian Martin Duberman writes in his 1993 book, Stonewall. “People began to dream about something other than getting from one day to the next with a minimum of discomfort.”

Within weeks, new political organizations had been founded. In little more than a decade, the structure of the modern GLBT movement had been built.

Since 1969, police raids have passed into history. The laws that once criminalized homosexuality have been overturned. The medical community no longer sees us as mentally ill. The rules that once barred us from federal jobs have been dropped.

Bans on discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity have become law in 20 states and the District of Columbia. Same-sex marriage has been legalized in six states.

We have come so far, but we’re still second-class citizens.

The Defense of Marriage Act, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and immigration inequalities are just some of the laws that punish our families, hurt our children and impoverish us.

We don’t know yet whether voters will overturn marriage equality in any of the states that just enacted it. Extending marriage to all 50 states seems daunting.

The history of the movement is a story of evolving dreams. Before Stonewall, our most fervent dream was to merely get by, hidden but alive. The dream of the patrons of the Stonewall Inn was to live free of harassment.

I came out 10 years after Stonewall. My dream was to live openly and honestly without being fired, shunned by my family or beaten to death by bigots who hated dykes on sight. At the time, I was considered radical. The idea that I could even hope to marry never once entered my mind.

Today a new generation – the second to come of age since Stonewall – thinks my old dreams are timid. They want nothing less than full equality.

They have no patience with we Baby Boomers and the institutions we built. These GLBT millennials, and their heterosexual brethren, think our old go-slow, step-by-step strategy is obsolete.

They’re right.

But their passion will not win equality until GLBT Americans are once again willing to sacrifice. It is time that we follow the lead of Stonewall and put our own security on the line.

Lt. Dan Choi and other gay service members are already challenging DADT. The rest of us need to come out to family, friends, neighbors and co-workers.

Nadine Smith, executive director of Equality Florida, recently suggested, among other actions, that married couples risk the wrath of the IRS and refuse to pay federal taxes as if they were single – a requirement necessitated by DOMA.

The patrons of the Stonewall Inn would expect nothing less.