The angry, vocal protests by gays and lesbians heartbroken by the passage of Proposition 8 recall a time 30 years ago when grief stricken groups took to the streets in San Francisco after the assassination of Harvey Milk, one of the nation’s first openly gay elected official.

But in the history of modern gay rights, the seminal setbacks — the Stonewall riots, Milk, AIDS — were catalysts for political movements that historians say advanced gay rights to a place unimaginable during Milk’s time.

That’s easy to forget in the new grief about Proposition 8.

“I know that some people see gay marriage as a big defeat,” historian and author John D’Emilio said. “But gay is in the news and in the culture. Who can really know what Harvey would think about what we have today. But I think he’d look in wonder at what had been achieved.”

Today, as the community remembers the 30th anniversary of Milk’s death, there are hundreds of openly gay elected officials across the country, from city councils to Congress. Thousands of high schools have formed alliances between gay students and their straight friends. Gay and lesbian studies is part of university curriculums, said D’Emilio, professor of gender and women’s studies and history at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

It is a testament to the changed times that Hollywood is releasing a movie about Milk and today the U.S. public is well-versed in the cultural lexicon of gay history, mileposts of the past three decades of a community’s struggle to become part of society’s fabric: AIDS, ACT UP, Rep. Barney Frank, domestic partnership, “don’t ask, don’t tell,” Ellen, “Will & Grace,” San Francisco weddings and Proposition 8.

Just five years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down state sodomy laws which ended the criminalization of sex between consenting same-sex adults.

None of these were on Milk’s political agenda when he was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977.

Paul Boneberg was a senior at San Jose State University then and president of the gay student union.

“I remember meeting other students who thought then that they were the only gay person,” said Boneberg, now executive director of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual Transgender Historical Society in San Francisco. “We’re living in the community he created.”

When Milk pleaded with gay doctors and attorneys and teachers to publicly identify themselves as such — to show they were already part of people’s lives and neighborhoods — he issued a simple but powerful strategy for political change that reverberates today.

“His call to action was to come out so we can win the hearts and minds of people,” said Campbell City Councilman Evan Low, 25, who came out when he was in college.

Just a year after Milk’s death, about 100,000 gays and lesbians, seeming to heed his call, thronged in Washington, D.C., in the nation’s largest gay rights march.

The AIDS epidemic that ushered the 1980s “was the single most important agent of change” for the country’s gay and lesbian community, D’Emilio said. AIDS decimated a third of the gay men living in the Castro, the neighborhood that Milk represented. Across the country, thousands more were dying while America was gripped by fear and homophobia.

“The epidemic moved countless people to take heroic action. They came out of the closet. They built organizations. They lobbied,” D’Emilio said.

Anger against the government’s seeming lack of care spawned a new protest culture. ACT UP, a controversial and in-your-face group of gays and lesbians, frequently confronted the government to push for funds for AIDS care and national research.

“Don’t ask, don’t tell,” the government policy that denied gays and lesbians entry into military service defined the decade of the 1990s. That too, historians say, was seen as a defeat, but it began forcing a public discussion about the role of gays and lesbians.

Gays and lesbians had moved out of the closet to demanding a place in society.

That struggle “to be a full and equal participant” in society played out in recent years in the fight for same-sex marriage. Hawaii put the discussion on the map but Massachusetts and San Francisco performed weddings.

“I hope we fight same-sex marriage on the federal level next,” said Megan Thompson, 21, a senior studying clinical psychology at SJSU. She is chair of the campus gay and lesbian student organization, Queers Thoughtfully Interrupting Prejudice.

“That would be a monumental battle,” said Thompson, who married in October. “That would require a shift in thinking across the country.”

It may take many decades to fully assess the impact of Proposition 8 on gay rights, but just as Milk ushered a new kind of politics for gays and lesbians, some see gay marriage as a new milestone.

“In many ways, we were exhausted after AIDS,” said Rafael Mandelman, the 35-year-old president of the Harvey Milk Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Democratic Club, the group Milk founded.

“People were turned a little bit inward, not as focused on the collective struggle,” he said. “There’s a rediscovery of civil rights, the culture of protest. People have gotten engaged.”

Contact Jessie Mangaliman at jmangaliman@mercurynews.com or (408) 920-5794.