Salt Lake Tribune's take on gay marriage: More perfect unions

Call it cosmic convergence or mere coincidence, but the first day that Massachusetts issued marriage licenses to same-sex couples happened to fall on the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education. We cannot help but wonder whether, 50 years from now, Americans will look back on yesterday's events as being as significant to the cause of civil rights for gays and lesbians as the handing down of Brown 50 years earlier was for black Americans.
It is, of course, impossible to know.

As things turned out, the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Brown, which held that separate but equal accommodations in public education were unconstitutional, was a watershed moment in the civil rights movement of the 20th century. What followed was a long struggle to adjust public policies in this nation to more closely fulfill Jefferson's vision of equality for all Americans before the law. That struggle progressed through school integration and busing, and continues today in the debates over affirmative action, school choice and adequate funding.

Perhaps the battle over gay marriage will follow a similarly tortuous path. Massachusetts, after all, is issuing marriage licenses to couples of the same sex because of a ruling by that state's Supreme Judicial Court last November that gays and lesbians have a constitutional right to marry. The court further held in a subsequent ruling that a civil union is no substitute, under the state's constitution, for a marriage. In other words, separate isn't equal.

More here:
http://www.sltrib.com/2004/May/05182004/opinion/opinion.asp