President Barack Obama reached out to frustrated gay and lesbian backers this week by extending a handful of modest benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees. It wasn’t a very substantive gesture, and the response was proportional. But the move wasn’t meaningless, either.

Constrained by federal law, Obama’s memorandum didn’t go nearly as far as, say, Washington state’s new statute granting same-sex couples all the considerations that married couples enjoy – except, of course, the word “marriage.”

But it was, to borrow an overworked phrase, another step. Or, as Obama himself put it, “only one step.”

As Obama surely knows, populations who have been denied their full measure of rights as Americans do not respond warmly to calls for patience.

Why should they? Progress toward justice happens slowly, and generations come and go waiting in vain to see what it’s like to be a full-fledged citizen, waiting for fulfillment of the promise portrayed in Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream.

Slavery did not end with the Emancipation Proclamation. School segregation did not end with the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. Such watershed moments provide historic reference points, but they seldom produce abrupt reversals in public behavior.

Half a century ago, the American Psychiatric Association officially considered homosexuality a form of mental illness. A decade-long debate within the organization finally produced a 1973 renunciation of that position by the APA board – although it was another year before the membership affirmed that move in a referendum forced by dissenters.

It was in that era that a Spokane city councilman announced his determination to drive gays out of town – and got the support of at least one other council member.

Real progress in the ongoing struggle for equality and civil rights comes about incrementally, because of step-by-step persistence by those who are determined to see society overcome its cultural blindness. Some want to race ahead, and some want to dig in their heels – if not turn around and sprint backward. For evidence of progress in the gay rights campaign, compare the battle lines of 1973 with those of today.

Ultimately, it isn’t individual political leaders who have the authority to bring about positive change, it’s an enlightened public that gives them permission to lead in the right direction.