IGF CultureWatch

John McCain has made it hard to vote for him. Linking Barack Obama to terrorism was odious. Choosing Sarah Palin was reckless. Still, an advocate of gay equality who's otherwise closer to McCain's views on economic and foreign policy can support him with a clear conscience. That's because the differences on gay issues - as a practical matter - are less dramatic than we've been told by the organized "GLBT movement." As the practical differences on gay issues get smaller, non-gay issues grow in salience.

You wouldn't know it by listening to gay pundits and organizations, but McCain is the most gay-friendly Republican presidential nominee ever. That's not just faint praise. Despite election-season pandering to the religious right, he's not one of them and they know it. He has openly gay staffers and campaign officials. He has defended his gay colleagues in public office against attacks by religious conservatives. The convention that nominated him was free of anti-gay rhetoric. Even marriage, long a crowd-pleaser, was rarely mentioned. In fact, 49 percent of the delegates to the GOP convention supported civil unions or gay marriage. And unlike Bush in 2004, McCain's campaign has not exploited homophobia.

There's much more. In a first for a Republican presidential nominee, McCain recently responded in writing to questions from the Washington Blade, DC's gay newspaper. The responses, while occasionally mealy-mouthed, were encouraging. Yet gay activists replied to the interview as if he'd called for death camps for gays.

Take the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which McCain voted against in 1996. Gay organizations' scorecards continue to say that he "opposes" ENDA. The truth is more complicated. McCain told the Blade that he now supports "non-discrimination in hiring for gay and lesbian people" and will "give careful consideration" to ENDA. Moreover, his lingering reservations about ENDA are not "anti-gay": if drafted too broadly, the law will needlessly erode religious liberty and generate frivolous and costly litigation.

Skeptics will say these are excuses for vetoing ENDA, no matter what form it takes. They may be right. But it's significant that McCain, who unlike Obama has a long record of actually working productively with the other party, also promises to consult Congress to meet these concerns. Unlike Obama, McCain could actually get around a possible GOP filibuster in the Senate to pass the bill.

Still, Obama would sign ENDA no matter how broadly drafted. A Democratic Congress wouldn't have the votes to override a McCain veto, which would at least mean a narrower bill than we'd get under Obama. So the advantage goes to Obama, but the difference is smaller than once supposed.

Obama supports a hate-crimes law covering sexual orientation. McCain would veto it largely on federalism grounds because controlling crime is primarily the responsibility of the states. Again, that's not an "anti-gay" view; indeed, protecting the states' prerogatives to decide important policy matters was the basis for McCain's and many congressional Democrats' opposition to a federal marriage amendment in 2004 and 2006. In any case, there's no evidence such laws actually deter hate crimes, so Obama is better on an issue that doesn't much matter in practice.

Then there's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," which Obama opposes. As gay organizations like to remind us, McCain supported it in 1993 (as did Bill Clinton and the Democratic Congress back then).

But, in another sign of a thaw ignored or belittled by gay leaders and writers, McCain told the Blade he "will have the policy reviewed." He is open to ending DADT, he said, but only if military leaders agree. So the upshot, one might think, is that Obama will end DADT while McCain will only "review" whether to end it. That's a big difference between them, you say.

Not so fast. Like McCain, Obama would need the support of military leaders to end the ban. He would then have to pressure Congress on a matter involving military policy and national security, areas of perennial Democratic political vulnerability.

Neither persuading military leaders nor wary congressional Democrats to end DADT is a given in an Obama administration. Unlike McCain, Obama has no military background and little credibility with the military brass. (If, on the other hand, McCain decided to end the ban, he would be uniquely positioned to do so, like Richard Nixon traveling to China.) Also unlike McCain, Obama has an undistinguished legislative record, which bodes ill for pressuring his own party or Republicans on the issue.

Thus, it's unlikely that DADT would be repealed in an Obama administration. I agree that it's better symbolically to have a president on record against DADT than one who's agnostic about it, but the outcome is likely to be the same: no end to DADT in the next administration.

Both men oppose gay marriage. But McCain supported the Defense of Marriage Act (along with Bill Clinton and most congressional Democrats) back in 1996, and continues to support it, while Obama opposes it. This another area in which the conventional gay-rights scorecard favors Obama.

But here we have another distinction that makes little practical difference. Repealing DOMA would be very difficult, requiring full presidential commitment and masterful legislative skills. Obama might be up to this task, but there's little evidence of it so far.

Gay pundits and leaders love to remind us that Obama opposes California's Proposition 8, which would ban gay marriage. But they never mention that Obama's "opposition" has consisted of a single letter sent several months ago to a local gay Democratic group in San Francisco. No public statements. No TV or radio ads. McCain supports Prop 8, but never mentions it in his campaign. Again, there's a paper advantage to Obama here, but neither his nominal opposition to Prop 8 nor McCain's nominal support for it has had any practical impact.

Despite what he once erroneously said, McCain does not oppose gay adoptions. His campaign clarified that he supports adoptions by loving parents, without regard to sexual orientation. In fact, McCain told the Blade that he "respect[s] the hundreds of thousands of gay and lesbian people" struggling and doing their best to raise adopted children. Gay groups have pounced on McCain's original misstatement as evidence that he's "anti-gay," but they never get around to explaining the context and the subsequent clarification.

Also on the subject of gay marriage, we should never forget that McCain led the charge against the Federal Marriage Amendment, loudly bucking his own party and President Bush when it really counted. Though he seems genuinely accepting of gay people, Obama has never taken a position on gay rights that cost him politically. McCain did so on the single most important gay issue of this generation.

It's true that Sarah Palin recently broke with McCain and endorsed the FMA, just as Dick Cheney broke with Bush in 2004 to oppose the FMA. But Palin is not the presidential candidate in this race, McCain is. Amending the Constitution to ban gay marriage is off the table politically, regardless of what Palin thinks - thanks in part to McCain.

The upshot legislatively is this: Under Obama we'd likely get ENDA and a symbolic hate-crimes law. Under McCain, we might get a narrower ENDA and no hate-crimes law. That's all. It's a difference that gay voters are surely right to take into account, but it's hardly a huge difference.

Finally, Obama's judicial nominees will be more gay-friendly and more aggressive about using judicial power to support gay rights than McCain's will be. But McCain will face a strongly Democratic Senate, which will moderate his choices. He also tends to favor judicial-restraint conservatives who respect precedent rather than judicial-activist conservatives who want a right-wing legal revolution.

So while they won't advance the cause, McCain's nominees probably won't reverse prominent gay-rights legal victories, either. Despite what you may have heard, it's unlikely the Supreme Court's decision overturning sodomy laws will even be reviewed, much less reversed, because of appointments by McCain.

None of this will persuade a liberal voter who prefers Obama on lots of non-gay issues. Nor will it persuade a single-issue gay-rights supporter who cares about nothing else. I respect these choices. I myself opposed Bush in 2000 and 2004 because he backed sodomy laws and the FMA. These were red lines for me and Bush crossed them.

But this year is different. While Obama is undisputedly better on gay issues than McCain, the differences in likely results are not so great that a vote for McCain is unforgivable. For those gay and gay-supportive voters who worry about the effect of an Obama administration combined with a Democratic Congress on taxes, spending, trade, Iraq, and national security against terrorism, a vote for McCain this year is not a betrayal of gay rights. For such voters, it's the right choice.

I've been doing a lot of same-sex marriage debates lately, and thus interacting with opponents-not just my debate partner, but also audience members, some of whom will soon be voting on marriage amendments.

Recently one of them asked, "Where does your standard of marriage come from?"

From her tone, I could tell she meant it more as a challenge-a purely rhetorical question-than as a genuine query. Still, I wanted to give her a good answer.

But what is the answer? My own "standard" of marriage, if you can call it that, comes from my parents and grandparents, whose loving, lifelong commitments I strive to emulate. That doesn't mean mine would resemble theirs in every detail-certainly not the male/female part-but I can't help but learn from their example.

That wasn't the answer she was looking for, so she asked again. This time I tried challenging the question: talking about "THE" standard of marriage suggests that marriage is a static entity, rather than an institution that has evolved over time. Historically, marriage has been more commonly polygamous than monogamous; more commonly hierarchical than egalitarian. It changes.

I pointed these facts out, adding that our standard for marriage-or any other social institution-ought to be human well-being. Since same-sex marriage promotes security for gay and lesbian persons and, consequently, social stability, it meets that standard.

She wasn't satisfied. "But if we don't have a single fixed standard," she continued, "then anything goes."

There's something rhetorically satisfying when an opponent's fallacies can be identified with neat names: in this case, "false dilemma." Either marriage remains solely heterosexual, she was saying, or else society embraces a sexual free-for-all-as former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum put it, "man on man, man on dog, or whatever the case may be."

No, no, no. The fact that boundaries change and evolve does not entail that we should have no boundaries at all, or that where they're drawn is entirely arbitrary. Again, the standard is societal well-being, and everyone agrees that "man on dog" marriage fails to meet that standard. Let's not change the subject.

Her challenge reminded me of those who cite the dictionary and then object that same-sex marriage is "impossible by definition," since marriage by definition requires a husband and wife. Dictionaries reflect usage, and as usage evolves, so do dictionaries. (Ever try to read Beowulf in the original Old English?)

More important, the dictionary objection founders on the simple fact that if something were truly "impossible by definition," there would be no reason to worry about it, since it can't ever happen. No one bothers amending constitutions to prohibit square circles or married bachelors.

But my rhetorical satisfaction in explaining "false dilemma" and the evolution of language was tempered by the reality I was confronting. My questioner wasn't simply grandstanding. She was expressing a genuine-and widely shared-fear: if we embrace same-sex marriage, than life as we know it will change dramatically for the worse. Standards will deteriorate. Our children will inherit a confused and morally impoverished world.

Such fear is what's driving many of the voters who support amendments in California, Florida, and Arizona to prohibit same-sex marriage, and we ignore or belittle it at our peril.

And so I explained again-gently but firmly-how same-sex marriage is good for gay people and good for society. When there's someone whose job it is to take care of you a vice-versa, everyone benefits-not just you, but those around you as well. That's true whether you're gay or straight.

I also explained how giving marriage to gay people doesn't mean taking it away from straight people, any more than giving the vote to women meant taking it away from men. No one is suggesting that we make same-sex marriage mandatory. Our opponents' talk of "redefining" marriage-rather than, say, "expanding" it-tends to obscure this fact.

Not all fears bend to rational persuasion, but some do. In any case, I don't generally answer questions in these forums for the sole benefit of the questioner. Typically, I answer them for benefit of everyone in the room, including the genuine fence-sitters who are unsure about what position to take on marriage equality for gays and lesbians.

To them, we need to make the case that same-sex marriage won't cause the sky to fall.

If the election were held tomorrow, it's quite likely that gays would lose marriage in California.

That's California, our most populous state, home of San Francisco and Nancy Pelosi and the liberal Hollywood elite. What progressive California giveth, progressive California may taketh away.

It surprises (and frankly, depresses) me how few gay people know or care what's happening. Here's the quick version: in May, the California Supreme Court declared the state's ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional. Prior to the decision, California had domestic partnership legislation granting nearly all of the statewide legal incidents of marriage. But the Court held that denying marriage to gay and lesbian couples deprived them of a fundamental right and constituted wrongful discrimination.

Gays began legally marrying in June, making California the second state (after Massachusetts) to support marriage equality.

Meanwhile, opponents collected enough signatures for a November ballot initiative to amend the constitution so that "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." (The amendment would leave domestic partnerships intact, but it would make it impossible for California to recognize same-sex marriages from Massachusetts or elsewhere.)

For several months we seemed poised to win. That changed in the last few weeks, with recent polls showing us losing 47-42 percent.

Why the shift? One reason is that we're being out-fundraised and outspent, and the opposition's advertising is effective. Recent figures posted by the Los Angeles Times show our opponents raising $26.1 million to our $21.8. A substantial chunk of the opposition's money has come from out of state, 40 percent of it from Mormons.

You read that last line correctly: 40 percent of the financial support for one-man-one-woman marriage in California is coming from members of a church that little over a century ago was pro-polygamy (and still has many polygamist offshoots). Forty percent of the support is coming from a religious denomination that makes up less than 2 percent of the U.S. population.

What's even more shocking are some of the individual reports about donors. The Sacramento Bee tells the story of Pam and Rick Patterson, who live with their five children in a modest three-bedroom home in Folsom. They withdrew $50,000 from their savings and donated it to Yes on 8. Pam says that it wasn't an easy decision, "But it was a clear decision, one that had so much potential to benefit our children and their children."

Or consider David Nielson, a retired insurance executive from Auburn. He and his wife Susan donated $35,000. They plan to forgo vacations for the next several years and make other sacrifices to cover their donation, "because some causes are worth fighting for."

If I didn't know better, I would think that California had just made same-sex marriage mandatory.

And this is what's both baffling and frustrating. We gays have a direct and palpable stake in the outcome of this referendum. Yet few of us (myself included) are willing to make the kinds of sacrifices made by the Nielsons and the Pattersons-people whose marriage was, is, and will remain heterosexual regardless of what happens. They are free to choose so-called "traditional marriage" if it suits them. So what are they so afraid of?

I think the gay-rights movement's failure to grapple with this question is another important reason why we may lose. We frame our arguments in terms of rights and liberty, forgetting that some people want the liberty to live without exposure to certain ways of life. They want a world where no one sees marriage for gays as an option-not their government, not their neighbors, and definitely not their children.

They want that world badly, badly enough to sacrifice for it.

In a democratic society, they are free to want that simpler world, and to spend money to get it, and to vote in favor of it. We are free to fight back. But that fight must include thoughtful responses to their concerns. It is not enough to assert our rights, especially when the documents embodying those rights can be amended by popular vote.

We need to make a positive moral case to our opponents. We need to show them that our lives are good, that our relationships are healthy, that our happiness is compatible with theirs. We need to show them that marriage is good for gays, and that what's good for gays is good for society.

We need to tell them the story of Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, the first same-sex couple to marry in California, a couple who were together for 56 years until Del Martin's death in August at the age of 87. We need to tell them: these are the kind of people you are trying to take marriage away from.

I wouldn't put my money on winning over the Pattersons and the Nielsons. But there are undecided voters who share their concerns-concerns about the world their children will inherit. We need to make the case to them. We need to raise money to communicate that case. And we need to do it fast.

In case you hadn't noticed, we are in the middle of October's annual observance of Gay History Month. Nor would anyone's failure to notice be surprising.

Gay History Month has been institutionally homeless in recent years, so no organization is really publicizing it. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation was once eager to host it, but quickly lost interest. A few gay Web sites, email lists, gay community centers and gay newspapers have continued to promote gay history, but too few and too little.

I suppose the question arises, Why should anyone bother with gay history? After all, the past is only prologue to our own time. It's over. The important point is to move on from here. So learning about gay history is a merely antiquarian enterprise.

True enough, you can live a reasonably happy and satisfying life without knowing any gay history. But I don't see it as quite so irrelevant to our own time. I think knowing gay history has some continuing value. For one thing, we can be encouraged and energized by learning about the lives and pioneering activist efforts of many gays in the past.

I admire the courage and self-confidence of the gay men and women who came out in the 1950s and 1960s-before the "Stonewall" street theater of late June 1969 gave a populist boost to the gay movement. And I admire the continuous struggle, sometimes successful, sometimes not, to find an audience for gay-affirming arguments among politicians and the media in order to confront the culture's homophobia at a time when it was much more pervasive than now.

No one can fail to be moved by the story of San Francisco city supervisor (i.e., city councilman) and pioneering activist Harvey Milk who was assassinated on Nov. 27, 1970s. Milk had a premonition that he might at some point be assassinated, and in a tape of his "political will" he made the now famous statement, "If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door."

Randy Shilts's book "The Mayor of Castro Street" (1982) tells the story. It also contains Milk's speeches, including one called "The Hope Speech," in which he said our goal as gay activists is to provide hope for isolated young gays in such places as Altoona, Pa., and Richmond, Minn. Longtime Chicago activist Tim Drake once told me he re-reads that speech at least once a year.

Another reason to learn some gay history is that we can find out from the experiences of gays in the past what survival techniques and what activist measures worked better and worse and what ones didn't work at all, all the more important since so much of the world (and the U.S.!) is still not very enlightened about gays.

Most people find it helpful to think of themselves as part of a community. And that community extends not only to other gays in the neighborhood and the city but back in time. From there it is but a short step to realizing that each of us is the latest but not last element in that community. There are young gays just being born and there are gays yet to be born who will continue our struggle for legal equality and social acceptance. They will build on whatever we are able to achieve culturally and politically and whatever institutional structures we are able to create.

At present, learning gay history is a "do it yourself" project. Fortunately, there are several good books covering different phases of gay history. If they aren't available to bookstores, public libraries probably have them. The earliest good one is John D'Emilio's Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities (1983) which covers the period 1940 to 1970. The more recent Out for Good (1999) by Dudley Clendinen and Adam Nagourney covers the period from 1969 to the late 1980s.

Three collections of accounts of gay activists provide valuable historical perspective: Before Stonewall (2002) begun by Wayne Dynes and completed by Vern Bullough contains brief biographies of nearly 50 early gay figures. The others are Eric Marcus's two overlapping but enjoyable collections of interview material, Making History (1992) and Making Gay History (2002).

And there are plenty of books on specialized topics-the history of the AIDS epidemic, homosexuality in 17th-century England, gay activism internationally, gays in the military, homosexuality in ancient Greece and homosexuality in New York City from the late 1890s to the 1930s. Perhaps the most comprehensive book of all is Louis Crompton's beautifully illustrated Homosexuality and Civilization (2003). Do not deprive yourself of the pleasures of these books.

Twenty-four years ago, California started a revolution that will culminate in this year's statewide election on same-sex marriage. In 1984, same-sex couples lacked not only the ability to marry one another, but were denied virtually any government recognition of their relationships - anywhere in the world.

In the early 1980s, there was not even a vocabulary yet for talking about same-sex couples. At the time, homosexuals in many states could still be subject to arrest for violation of the criminal sodomy laws. Naturally, they had bigger problems than trying to vindicate their rights as couples.

California's sodomy law was taken off the books by the legislature in 1976, which made the courthouse look a little less formidable here. For whatever reason, though, Californians took the lead in actively challenging laws that ignored the existence of same-sex couples.

One of the first cases involved Earl Donovan. He had been living with his partner for 27 years. When his partner died, Donovan filed for death benefits. He ultimately prevailed - but not because the court recognized him as a partner. The statute said that benefits could be paid to a "dependent" who was a member of the employee's "household," and it was clear Donovan qualified.

In contrast, Boyce Hinman tried to enroll his partner of 12 years in his dental coverage as a spouse, but was denied because Hinman and his partner were not married. The Court noted that California law prohibited the men from getting married, but concluded this was not discrimination because they were treated no differently from other unmarried couples.

It was this prevailing public attitude - that same-sex couples were like any unmarried couples - that illustrated the void same-sex couples faced. Heterosexual couples could, of course, marry their partner if they chose. But if marriage is a relationship between one man and one woman, what option did the law leave for same-sex couples?

At the time the Donovan and Hinman suits were pending, Larry Brinkin, a member of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission, was the first person to formally use the term "domestic partner," in a lawsuit he filed against his employer, the Southern Pacific Railway. Brinkin's partner had died, and Southern Pacific would not let Brinkin take three days of bereavement leave because the partner was not a legally recognized member of Brinkin's family. The common definition of "family" included only those who were related by blood, marriage or adoption. Brinkin's partner was not related to him in any of those ways.

After Brinkin lost his challenge in 1982, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors took up the challenge of somehow acknowledging the relationships of same-sex couples. They passed what would have been the first city ordinance recognizing domestic partners. But then-mayor Dianne Feinstein vetoed the measure.

The following year, the city of Berkeley ordered a study of the issue, and in July of 1984, the city council voted on - and rejected - a domestic partnership proposal, based largely on a definition devised by attorney Matt Coles. However, in August, the Berkeley School Board took up the measure and adopted it for school employees, making them the first government entity in the world to enact legal rights for domestic partners.

The city of Berkeley followed suit later that year. And in 1985, the newly formed city of West Hollywood enacted its own domestic partnership ordinance, and added a new twist - a registry where couples could formally and publicly make it known that they were domestic partners.

At the time, the combined population of Berkeley and West Hollywood was less than 183,000. Los Angeles had a population of about 3.7 million. So L.A.'s interest in the issue helped move it into a more mainstream position.

In April of 1986, the city of Los Angeles created a Task Force on Family Diversity, convened by Councilman Michael Woo. It was charged with looking at the "nature and extent of family diversity in the city of Los Angeles," including "any evident problems" experienced by single-parent families, unmarried couples and, specifically, gay or lesbian couples. (For the record, I served on the task force, and under the guidance of Task Force consultant, Thomas F. Coleman, and co-chairs, Christopher McCauley and Nora Baladerian, authored a paper setting out the framework for an ordinance that would recognize domestic partners.)

The Task Force held hearings in 1986 and throughout 1987. Several companies at the time had begun experimenting with domestic partner benefits for employees, beginning with the Village Voice newspaper. The primary employee benefit at issue was health insurance, and there was considerable resistance from the insurance industry to extending coverage to unmarried partners.

There were two primary concerns. The first was how an insurance company could tell the difference between someone who was just a friend or roommate, and one who was a life partner. A marriage license is a clear piece of evidence that the couple are more than just acquaintances. Lacking that, businesses - as well as governments - could be defrauded by couples who were not, in fact, committed to one another.

This resistance was heightened, at the time, because the partners at issue were homosexual, and the nation - not to mention the insurance industry - was just beginning to confront the issue of AIDS.

The Task Force report, issued in four volumes, noted the lack of legal options for same-sex couples, and recommended that L.A. recognize domestic partners. Using the models already in place in Berkeley and West Hollywood, the Task Force recommended that domestic partners sign a legally binding document setting out the specifics of their relationship.

(For example that they were unmarried, but were one another's sole domestic partner, that they shared a common household and had joint responsibility for household finances.)

This certificate of domestic partnership could be used by the city (and any interested insurance companies) to delineate the couple from mere roommates who might be seeking health insurance coverage. In 1988, the city acted on the recommendation.

Domestic partnership was a political, not a judicial effort. While same-sex marriage had been discussed as a possibility since the formation of the first two national gay rights organizations in Los Angeles in the 1950s - the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis - the only challenges to the marriage laws had been judicial, rather than political. And they had been failures.

If courts would not enforce this kind of equality, might there be some other form of recognition government could give to same-sex couples? That was the theory behind domestic partnership. Could the political process fill in the gap if something other than marriage was the legal vehicle?

The wisdom of this decision was illustrated by what happened subsequently in Hawaii. Three years after L.A.'s ordinance was adopted, Ninia Baehr and her partner, Genora Dancel, filed a lawsuit in Hawaii to have their relationship recognized as marriage. And in 1993, the Hawaii Supreme Court rocked the nation when it issued the first legal opinion from a state high court concluding that the constitutional protection of equality includes same-sex couples. This set off the well-known nationwide fury.

Because of concerns about whether other states would be required to recognize same-sex marriages in Hawaii, Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, by a vote of 85-14 in the Senate, and 342-67 in the House. The bill was authored by Georgia Congressman Bob Barr, and signed by President Bill Clinton, still a bit shell-shocked on gay issues from the firestorm he had set off by trying to fulfill a campaign promise to integrate open lesbians and gay men into the military.

These two laws with Clinton's signature on them - DOMA and Don't Ask, Don't Tell - are a testament to the hurricane force in the national political arena of anti-gay nervousness in the 1990s. After all that, Hawaii reversed the court's decision, changed its constitution, and implemented a limited form of domestic partnership they called "reciprocal beneficiaries."

Meanwhile, in California, the local domestic partnership laws of the 1980s continued to move through the state's political bloodstream. The first bill in the state legislature was introduced in 1995, but died in committee. In 1999, after four more failed attempts, the legislature passed AB 26 by Assembly Member Carole Migden. It provided minimal legal rights for domestic partners - hospital visitation and health insurance coverage for public employees - but it also provided the public registry that West Hollywood had pioneered.

There was vehement opposition, mostly from the Christianist right. They introduced an initiative, Proposition 22, for the March, 2000 election, which would add a provision to California statute (not, as with many other states at the time, a constitutional amendment) that said in its entirety, "Only marriage between a man and a woman shall be valid or recognized in California." The initiative passed with 61.4 percent of the vote in favor, and only 38.6 percent opposed.

It was that initiative, along with California's existing definition of marriage as limited to opposite-sex couples, that the California Supreme Court addressed and overturned this year. And now California's electorate has the chance to ratify or reject that decision in November.

However, even if Prop. 8 were to pass, its proponents have already conceded that California will not return to the past. In the years following 1999, California's domestic partnership law evolved into a nearly complete equivalent to marriage, and the initiative's proponents have made it clear in their ballot arguments - the definitive statement of an initiative's intent - that it will not affect domestic partner rights. This is how public policy in a democracy is supposed to work. No matter what happens with Prop. 8, California's same-sex couples will not be consigned to a world with no legal protections. Legally recognized same-sex couples are now an established part of the California landscape.

California has come a long way in less than a quarter of a century. We've given the world a small revolution, demonstrating that court decisions are sometimes a necessary part of the struggle for equality, but that politics and law do not work independently of one another.

As you have no doubt read or heard, on Oct. 10 the Connecticut Supreme Court struck down the state's civil union laws and ruled 4-3 that denying the right of civil marriage to same-sex couples violated the equal protection provision of the state constitution. The ruling makes Connecticut the third state to permit same-sex marriage, joining California and Massachusetts.

In his majority decision Justice Richard Palmer wrote, "To decide otherwise would require us to apply one set of constitutional principles to gay persons and another to all others."

The decision was important for its specific denial that civil unions are an adequate substitute for marriage. Several states including Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, New Hampshire, and Maine have passed civil union or domestic partner statutes, and the ruling gives ammunition to gays in those states who might file suit to obtain full marriage status.

"Marriage and civil unions ... are by no means equal," Palmer wrote. Marriage "is an institution of transcendent historical, cultural and social significance, whereas [civil unions] are not." Further on he wrote, "There is no doubt that civil unions enjoy a lesser status in our society than marriage." In so writing, Palmer took a familiar Religious Right claim about the importance of denying gays the right to marry and turned it in a gay-supportive direction.

As jubilant as Connecticut gays were, many gays in other parts of the country were pained by the decision, fearing that it would add fuel to the conservative effort in California, Arizona and Florida to pass constitutional amendments prohibiting same-sex marriage. Sadly, they are probably right. At least, it was impolitic to issue the decision just before the election.

But, at the same time, the decision is a gratifying affirmation of the legitimacy of our legal and moral arguments for marriage equality. Future state courts ruling on the issue will no doubt examine earlier court decisions carefully, so the more decisions there are on our side, and the better the arguments they offer, the more likely future courts will also rule in our favor. Certainly a negative decision would have a harmful impact.

In addition, the more gays and lesbians who marry and are able to present themselves to their friends, relatives, co-workers and fellow church members as married couples, the more that will get people used to the idea of same-sex marriage and move public opinion in a gay-supportive direction.

And finally, we have to believe that in the long run good arguments, whether they are advanced by gay organizations or trickle down from the nation's courts, will eventually prevail over poor arguments in the court of public opinion. Democracy is founded on this belief. And at some point in the future it will become possible to repeal those constitutional gay marriage bans.

Gratifyingly, the arguments of the dissenters against gay marriage were largely poor and seem drawn from the playbook of the Religious Right. One dissenter argued that there was no evidence that civil unions were inferior to marriage. But an earlier study in New Jersey found that many people did not view civil unions as conferring the same status as marriage and documented cases in which people in civil unions were not treated as legal couples in public accommodations such as hospitals.

Another dissenting argument was that gays do not qualify as a "suspect class" that has been traditionally disadvantaged. On the contrary, the dissent argued, gays have "unique and extraordinary" political power that does not justify such scrutiny.

I confess that I have never understood this argument. Why the actual or imagined political power of any group, much less one that is widely believed to be only 4 or 5 percent of the population, should justify denying its members basic constitutional rights is far from clear.

As for gays' supposed political power, is that why sodomy laws existed until very recently? Or why gays were long arrested and jailed for engaging in sex? Or why only 0.5 percent of House of Representatives members are openly gay and why there are no openly gay Senators? Or why open gays are barred from the U.S. military? Or why gays are unable to pass a national gay civil rights law? Or why there is no gay-inclusive national hate crimes law?

The final anti-gay marriage argument is the hoary one that marriage deals with procreation. But of course, once the state allows infertile couples to marry, as all of them do, it has effectively denied the legitimacy of the "procreation" argument. In addition, eight years ago Connecticut allowed gays to adopt children, further severing the connection between parenting and child rearing. The question to be asked is, Are the children of gay couples better off if their parents are married, or are they not? The answer seems obvious.