This was supposed to be the breakthrough year. First, gay marriage rights would sweep New England. Then, two huge prizes would come, New York and New Jersey. Soon, wedding bells would ring for gays and lesbians across the great Northeast.

Not long ago, just a couple of months back, after the string of heady legislative and court victories for same-sex marriage in Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, gay rights activists allowed themselves an unusual moment of celebration. After Massachusetts paved the way, most of New England had moved to their side, and out in the Midwest, the Iowa Supreme Court had overturned the state's ban on same-sex marriage.

In the middle of such surprising court and legislative successes, gays turned the pressure on President Obama, who supports gay rights but not same-sex marriage (let's not quibble over that contradiction), to repeal the military "don't ask, don't tell'' policy and to kill the so-called Defense of Marriage Act.

Euphoria ran through gay ranks, even among those who had no plans to rush to the altar soon, or ever. Veteran gay leaders, the work horses of the movement, could for once talk confidently about strategies and campaigns to spread the fight even beyond the Northeast to the fly-over states and out to the Pacific. But more immediately, their eyes were fixed on the New York and New Jersey.

"The votes are there," Evan Wolfson, executive director of New York-based Freedom to Marry, told me, speaking about the prospects for gay marriage legislation in the New York State Senate. Others on the inside of the gay campaign in New York, savvy head counters all, predicted a squeaker in their favor.

Then came the Nov. 3 elections. A few months, a few days, can make all the difference in politics, and so it was in Maine. Gay organizations, which had outspent the opposition, believed at the start that independent-minded, libertarian Maine was in the bag. Not so. After Maine's elected assembly approved gay marriage legislation, voters last week rejected it, stunning gay advocates everywhere.

Also hit was optimism for New Jersey, which went down the tubes in the gay struggle when incumbent, gay-friendly Governor Jon Corzine was defeated at the polls by anti-gay marriage conservative Chris Christie. With Christie at the helm, there's no chance a same-sex marriage bill will see the light anytime soon in New Jersey.

And now, prospects for New York look bleak. On Nov. 10, the State Senate delayed a much-anticipated vote when the marriage bill count came up several yeas short of the 32 needed for approval. It's unclear when the Senate will take it up again, though both sides are still busy in Albany lobbying for votes. At this point the math doesn't favor the pro-gay camp, and neither do the political winds, which have definitely taken a conservative tack. "I am disappointed,'' Evan Wolfson told me in an e-mail, "but confident and determined to see the marriage bill pass.''

Out in West Hollywood, Rick Jacobs, one of the so-called "new faces" of the movement and founder of Courage Campaign, saw red flags on the horizon. He pointed out that so far, each gay marriage victory has come through state courts and legislatures – none at the hands of the voters. He was still smarting about the loss in California, where voters last November overturned a State Supreme Court ruling approving same-sex matrimony. Jacobs, who cut his teeth on the Howard Dean and Obama campaigns, was betting, like many other gays, on a federal suit that the attorneys Theodore B. Olson and David Boies, adversaries in Bush v. Gore in 2000, are building to challenge California's vote against same-sex marriage. It's a case that they hope will eventually land at the Supreme Court, with the potential of a landmark ruling like Roe v. Wade to legalize gay marriages nationwide.

It's a long wait, a gamble, but gays know when to roll the dice.