She was born and raised in New York City in 1940.

In the 1950s and ’60s, Nestle became involved in the African American Civil Rights movement. She marched from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama with prominent African American leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and James Bevel.

After 1969’s riots in New York City’s Stonewall Inn,  Nestle dedicated herself more towards the by-then new Gay Rights Movement.

She helped found the Gay Academic Union in 1971. She also founded the Lesbian Herstory Archives with Deborah Edel in the early 1970s. The Archives are now the Lesbian community’s largest collection of important materials in the world.

Nestle is still an outspoken civil activist. She runs a popular blog and website.

I was five years old and bound for kindergarten in the fall.

For my birthday in May of that year I received my first wooden Louisville Slugger bat and a Franklin baseball glove.

By June I had suffered my first significant sports injury. I was catching a pickup game in the neighborhood and caught a split lip when the batter threw my first Louisville Slugger.

I remember well that event in the summer of 1969 because I drank milkshakes for two days.

And I remember gathering with my family to watch Apollo 11 landing on the moon, a live transmission from the moon to our television set.

My parents told me the moon landing would change the world, would change my life in ways I could not imagine.

I don’t remember anyone that summer mentioning Stonewall or that the riots outside that New York club would change the world, would change lives, would change my life in ways I could not imagine.

My parents probably saw a news report that Judy Garland had died, but they probably did not hear or read the short reports about the six nights of rioting. They were a long way from Greenwich Village and a current issue of The New York Times or Village Voice.

My parents, like many young Midwestern parents living on tomato soup and tuna casserole in their first suburban home, probably would not have quite grasped the meaning of the headline in the New York Daily News — “Homo nest raided. Queen bees are stinging mad.”

Stonewall took about 15 years or more to impact me and my family, but the event, with its long-lasting after-shocks, did influence my life in far more ways than Apollo 11’s landing on the moon.

When I came out, I came out into a community that, forged in Stonewall, had rioted and rebelled, protested and pushed, marched and rallied at capitols in most states and on the National Mall.

When I came out, I came out into a community that, following Stonewall, felt liberated and proclaimed pride. Think about Allen Ginsberg’s comment about the gay men he saw on Christopher Street after Stonewall — “They’ve lost that wounded look that fags all had 10 years ago.”

When I came out, I came out to friends and family aware and awakened by the modern movement that Stonewall spurred.

From Stonewall came gay power and from gay power came gay pride. And from gay pride the community learned to use its power, to build influence, to force change — social change, cultural change, political change.

Now, years after coming out, I realize the Stonewall riots even made possible my day-to-day domestic tranquility —though not yet equality — that my partner and I enjoy with our neighbors and co-workers.

Perhaps the most rebellious of readers might think this a sad comment, but I realize too that Stonewall helped pave the way for young gay Midwestern parents to start out like my parents — to be living happily in the summer of 2009 on tomato soup and tuna casserole and raising their 5-year-old daughter in their first suburban home.

My memories of 1969 are of baseball and new sneakers for school, learning to never talk to strangers and watching a goofy new show about “The Brady Bunch,” and finding my way to North Elementary School and thinking about walking on the moon.

My memories of 1969 are not of the Stonewall riots, or news of the riots, or talk of the riots. Years would pass before I would hear of Stonewall and even then I had to struggle to understand the concept of police harassment — because Stonewall had already forced some reform.

Stonewall is nowhere in my child’s memory of 1969, but Stonewall, that event that went unnoticed in the small Neff household that year, changed my life and the lives of so many others born then and born after.

Thank you, Stonewall generation.

And happy pride.

“I’ve asked for as thorough a report as possible … to reassure folks that the police are not singling out any group,” Councilman Joel Burns said Monday.

He said he was particularly disappointed that the raid occurred on the 40th anniversary of New York City police raid on the Stonewall Inn. That 1969 raid touched off a riot and subsequent demonstrations that fueled the gay rights movement in the U.S.

Burns said Fort Worth police were unaware of the anniversary.

Mayor Pro Tem Kathleen Hicks, also calling for an investigation, said she was “very concerned” after hearing from patrons and others in the community about the early Sunday morning raid at the Rainbow Lounge.

More than 100 people gathered outside the Tarrant County Courthouse on Sunday evening to protest what they said was police harassment and abuse.

One of those arrested during the raid, Chad Gibson, 26, remains hospitalized with bleeding on the brain, his sister Kristy Morgan said.

Gibson is not violent, and “for anyone to come back and say he did something to provoke this is ludicrous,” she told Dallas-Fort Worth television station KDFW.

Fort Worth police went to the Rainbow Lounge with Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission agents early Sunday as part of routine alcoholic beverage code inspections, said police Sgt. Chad Mahaffey. They first went to two other bars, where 10 people were arrested, he said.

Officers then went to the Rainbow Lounge, which had opened about a week ago. They encountered two drunk people who made “sexually explicit movements” toward officers and another who grabbed a TABC agent’s groin, according to the police report.

No one was arrested for assault but about half a dozen people were arrested on charges of public intoxication, according to police records.

Police Chief Jeff Halstead said Gibson was the patron who grabbed at the agent’s groin. Gibson was so drunk he was vomiting and struck his head when he fell, the chief said. Gibson was arrested, but was taken to the hospital instead of jail.

Halstead said he did not have additional details about how Gibson was injured.

The department has started an internal investigation into the raid, he said.

The TABC is waiting on a report from the Fort Worth office, but “given the concerns that have been raised, it would not be unusual” for an internal investigation to be done, said agency spokeswoman Carolyn Beck.

George Armstrong, 41, said he had been at the Rainbow Lounge about 30 minutes when officers stormed inside. He smiled and flashed a peace sign at one officer, but was then grabbed and tackled to the floor with his arm twisted behind his back, he said.

“He was yelling at me to stop resisting arrest, but I wasn’t doing anything. It was horrible. I really thought he had broken my shoulder,” Armstrong said Monday. “I’ve never been so embarrassed and humiliated. I didn’t do anything to him.”

Armstrong, who was arrested, said he noticed that other people who were arrested were injured or said they had been tackled by police.

Armstrong said he was released from jail the next day and went to a hospital, where his arm was put in a sling after X-rays determined his shoulder and back were severely bruised and strained.

Armstrong said he didn’t see anyone inside the Rainbow Lounge make lewd gestures or grab the officers.

“To me, it seemed like they were trying to make a point,” he said of the police.

“I want you to know: You have our support,” Obama told members of the core Democratic constituency as he and first lady Michelle Obama hosted a cocktail-and-appetizer reception in the East Room for gay pride month. It’s been some four decades since the police raid on New York City’s gay Stonewall Inn that spurred gay rights activism across the country.

As activists work to change minds and change laws, Obama added: “I will not only be your friend, I will continue to be an ally and a champion and a president who fights with you and for you.”

Since Obama took office in January, some activists have complained that Obama has not followed through on his campaign promises on issues they hold dear and has not championed their causes from the White House, including ending the ban on gays in the military.

Obama pleaded for patience.

“I know many in this room don’t believe that progress has come fast enough. And I understand that,” Obama said. But he added: “I expect and hope to be judged not by words, not by promises I’ve made, but by promises that my administration keeps.”

By the time he leaves office, the president said, “I think you guys will have pretty good feelings about the Obama administration.”

The crowd erupted in cheers.

He noted that he has issued a presidential memorandum expanding some federal benefits to same-sex partners. Critics have noted that it doesn’t include health benefits or pension guarantees.

Obama also reminded the audience that he has called on Congress to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, which limits how state, local and federal bodies can recognize partnerships and determine benefits. Still, he added: “We have a duty to uphold existing law, but I believe we must do so in a way that does not exacerbate existing divides.”

He said that does not mean he doesn’t back a repeal of the law.

Obama also said the administration is working to pass an employee nondiscrimination bill and a hate crimes bill that includes protections for gays and lesbian, and he said it’s committed to rescinding a ban on entry to the United States based on HIV status.

Obama reiterated his support for repealing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that allows gays and lesbians to serve in the military as long as they don’t disclose their sexual orientation or act on it. He said he doesn’t believe the policy makes the United State more secure, and he said his administration is working with Congress to develop a plan that will end the practice legislatively in a way that ensures the new policy works in the long term.

In a statement, Human Rights Campaign president Joe Solmonese said,  “President Obama’s remarks today were welcomed and appreciated and, as he stated, it is the actions to advance equality — not simply the words — that will be the true marker by which this White House will be judged.  

“On the eve of this weekend’s 40th anniversary of Stonewall, the president has yet again reiterated his support for most of the critical federal issues facing millions of LGBT Americans. We must continue the hard work of turning that support into the passage of actual laws. We look forward to working with President Obama and his administration to advance equality, and we pledge to be good-faith partners throughout the many battles that lie ahead of us.”

When police raided the bar in the past for selling liquor without a license, patrons normally submitted to arrest or dispersed quietly. But on June 28, Castro recalled, people fought back.

As officers tried to throw him in a police wagon, Castro used the vehicle as a spring to push back, knocking them to the ground.

“They literally carried me into the … wagon and threw me in there,” recalled Castro, now 67. “It must’ve been the motivation of the crowd that inspired me to resist. Or maybe at that point enough was enough.”

The several days of disturbances that followed the uprising at the bar in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village became one of the defining moments of the gay rights movement. Thousands of people are converging on the city for gay pride events to mark the riots’ 40th anniversary, while a bill is pending in the Legislature to make New York the seventh state to legalize same-sex marriage.

Castro said the demonstrations became a catalyst for years of progress allowing gays and lesbians to live more open lives – although he didn’t see it at the time.

“I never thought 40 years ago that it would turn out to be much of anything,” he said in a phone interview. “I had no clue of history being made.”

Castro, who now lives in Madeira Beach, Fla., outside St. Petersburg, is far removed from Stonewall. But his name surfaced in newly released NYPD police reports documenting arrests during the riots. The reports had previously redacted names of some arrested on the first night, but were obtained in May under the Freedom of Information Law by OutHistory.Org, a Web site run by the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the City University of New York.

Another name that appears in police reports for the first time is that of Marilyn Fowler, confirming earlier accounts that a woman was one of the main instigators of initial resistance to police.

“There are many witnesses to the Stonewall riots who say a woman, a lesbian presumably, played an important role in intensifying the resistance when they tried to arrest her and put her in the wagon,” said Jonathan Ned Katz, the Web site’s director, who recently obtained the documents. “It’s a very important name to be discovered.”

And for Castro, the name refutes other long-held beliefs that the Stonewall demonstrators were all white gay men.

“It wasn’t just gays,” said Castro, who was born in Puerto Rico and left in 1945. “It wasn’t just white gays.”

“You had straight people sympathetic to gays. People of the arts. You had people who had had enough (of the police). You had Latinos, you had blacks, you had whites, Chinese, you had everything. It was a melting pot. Young, old. Fems, butches.”

Castro recalled being arrested with a woman on June 28 but didn’t remember her name. He was arrested on a harassment charge, according to the police report, that was later dismissed.

“Defendants … did shove and kick the officer …” reads the report, one of nine NYPD documents Katz posted on the Web site.

It was hot and humid the night police officers raided the inn for selling liquor without a license. Police estimated 200 patrons were thrown out of Stonewall, according to a June 29, 1969, New York Times article.

After the raid, the crowd outside the Stonewall swelled to about 400, according to the Times account, citing police estimates.

Police were “attempting to leave premises with prisoners” when “they were confronted by a large crowd who attempted to stop them from removing prisoners. The crowd became disorderly,” read a copy of the NYPD complaint.

Four police officers were injured, including one with a broken wrist, according to the Times, which described the scene as a “rampage” by hundreds of young men. Thirteen people were arrested that first night on charges including harassment, disorderly conduct, and resisting arrest, the story says.

As the raid moved outside, with people hurling coins, stones, garbage and insults at the police, Castro was somehow pushed back inside the bar, where police held him and others. After a while, two police officers escorted him out of the bar in handcuffs, he said, before he pushed back as he was escorted into the wagon.

There are little reminders of Stonewall in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village today. The building was designated a national landmark in 1999, and currently houses a bar unaffiliated with the inn.

At the time, Castro says, patrons would usually knock to get into the Christopher Street inn, while someone inside peered through a peephole to size up the visitor.

“If you were one of us they’d let you in,” Castro said. “If you were straight or you looked like a cop they’d say ‘private club.’”

In 1972 Castro left New York City for suburban Long Island, where he met his partner of 30 years, Frank Sturniolo, in a disco. By 1989, the couple had settled in Florida, said Castro, who retired from his job as a decorator in an Entenmann’s bakery specialty shop.

Castro, who is battling stomach cancer, marveled at the progress for gay rights over the past four decades. In the 1970s, major psychiatric associations removed homosexuality from their lists of mental disorders. The country has more than 400 openly gay and lesbian elected officials, according to the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, a political action committee.

Still, Castro and other gay rights advocates say, there’s more work to be done. For example, the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” remains in place. So does a federal law allowing states to ban or refuse recognition of same-sex marriages.

To Castro’s disappointment, Florida voters passed a constitutional amendment last November banning same-sex marriage and civil unions, as did voters in other states, including California.

“I hope that I see it in Florida some day,” he said.

The annual march down Fifth Avenue commemorated the Stonewall rebellion of 40 years ago, when patrons at a gay bar resisted the police. The several days of disturbances that followed the uprising became one of the defining moments of the gay rights movement.

The celebration was tempered by the knowledge that other states, including Massachusetts, Connecticut and Iowa, have legalized same-sex marriage before New York.

“Hopes and dreams and expectations have been raised, and there is nothing worse than to for people to have their hopes die out, to have the rug pulled out from under them,” said City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, New York City’s most prominent openly gay elected official.

Gov. David Paterson said he remains hopeful that the state Senate will pass a same-sex marriage bill – if it can resolve the partisan stalemate that has paralyzed it.

“If we have an end to the stalemate in Albany I would think that it would be passed shortly after,” he said. “We believe we can pass the bill.”

This year’s march featured the usual mix of seasoned activists, dazzling drag performers and floats blasting disco beats.

A faux Liza Minnelli in a slinky dress and spiky wig lip-synched “New York, New York” atop the Stonewall Inn float.

The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center’s float was sponsored by the Broadway musical “Shrek,” whose ogres-need-love-too message was apparently a good fit.

Flavia Rando marched with the Gay Liberation Front, which began in 1969 after the Stonewall uprising.

“It feels like we changed the world,” Rando said. “We started a global movement.”

In addition to Paterson, one of the parade’s grand marshals, elected officials marching included Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Sen. Charles Schumer.

Parade organizers claimed as many as 500,000 participants. That number was difficult to verify, but many thousands marched or lined Fifth Avenue to watch.

Spectator Mark Jester of Denton, Md., visiting New York for the first time, said the parade was “awesome,” especially the drag queens.

“I have a lot of respect, because if I would do that at home I literally would have to fight,” he said.

Danielle Staub of the Bravo reality show “The Real Housewives Of New Jersey” marched in heels that rivaled a drag queen’s and said gay people deserve the right to marry.

“My two marriages didn’t last as long as most of the gay community’s partnerships,” she noted.

As part of the yearlong celebration of the 400th anniversary of the Dutch encounter with New York, Amsterdam officials held a contest for couples to marry in that city, where same-sex marriage has been legal since 2001.

The winners, five couples with one Dutch partner and one American partner, will travel to Amsterdam for its August gay pride celebration and get married there.

“We kept saying we were going to do it here once it was legal in New York state,” said contest winner Stephan Hengst, who was born in the Netherlands and now lives in Highland, N.Y., with his partner Patrick Decker. “We hope to see it become legal in New York very soon.”

And so he suggests a chant to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Stonewall this weekend:

“We’re here, we’re queer, they’ll get to us eventually.”

Check out the segment below.

“Next Monday’s event is a chance for the White House to recognize the accomplishments of LGBT Americans,” White House spokesman Shin Inouye said. “Invited guests include families, volunteers and activists, and community leaders.”

The event will be also marked as a part of Pride month.