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Conservative Democrats have at best been unenthusiastic about efforts to push gay rights measures in Congress; 30 Democrats voted against a bill prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation that passed the House in 2007. (It died in the Senate.) And a half-dozen Democrats declined requests to discuss this issue, reflecting what aides called the complicated politics surrounding it.

Still, there are signs that the issue is not as pressing or toxic as it once was. “I don’t think it’s the political deal-breaker it once was,” said Dave Saunders, a southern Virginia Democratic consultant who has advised Democrats running for office in conservative rural areas. “Most people out here really don’t care because everybody has gay friends.”

Interviews with gay leaders suggest a consensus that there has been nothing short of a cultural transformation in the space of just a few years, even if it is reflected more in the evolving culture of the country than in the body of its laws.

“The diminution of the homophobia has been as important a phenomena as anything we’ve seen in the last 15 years,” said Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, who is gay.

Democrats now control the White House and both houses of Congress for the first time since 1994, increasing the chances of legislative action. Mr. Frank said that over the next two years, he expected Congress to overturn the ban on gay service in the military, pass legislation prohibiting discrimination against hiring gay workers, and extend the hate-crime bill to crimes involving gay couples.

There is also an emerging generational divide on gay issues — younger Americans tend to have more liberal positions — that has fueled what pollsters said was a measurable liberalization in views on gay rights over the past decade.

A New York Times/CBS News poll last spring found that 57 percent of people under 40 said they supported same-sex marriage, compared with 31 percent of respondents over 40. Andy Kohut, the president of the Pew Research Center, said the generational shift was reflected in his polling, in which the number of Americans opposing gay people serving openly in the military had dropped to 32 percent now from 45 percent in 1994.

David Axelrod, a senior Obama adviser, said, “You look at polling and attitudes among younger people on these issues are startlingly different than older people.”

“As generational change happens,” Mr. Axelrod added, “that’s going to be more and more true.”

In the view of many gay leaders, the shifts in public attitude are a validation of the central political goal set by the dozens of gay liberation groups that sprouted up in cities and on college campuses in the months after the Stonewall uprising: to have gay men and lesbians who had been living in secret go public as a way of dealing with societal fear and prejudice.

But there is considerable evidence that this is still an issue that stirs political concerns. Gay leaders have increasingly complained about what they call Mr. Obama’s slow pace in fulfilling promises he made during his campaign. Some boycotted a Democratic Party fund-raiser recently to show their distress.

“I have been really surprised how paralyzed they seem around this,” said Richard Socarides, who was an adviser to President Bill Clinton on gay issues.

Mr. Hildebrand did not respond to calls and e-mail messages asking about his encounter with Mr. Obama, which he described in a private e-mail forum for gay political leaders. (The meeting was confirmed by senior White House officials.)

Still, David Mixner, a longtime gay leader, said he was struck by how things had changed.

“Listen,” Mr. Mixner said, “in 1992, what we were begging Bill Clinton about — literally — about whether he was going to say the word ‘gay’ in his convention speech. Even say it. We had to threaten a walkout to get it in.”

(Copyright : New York Times).

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