Look forward on marriage

WHEN California voters approved a state constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages on Election Day, it was a stinging loss for equal rights. Gay and lesbian couples there had just won the right to marry in May, after the state Supreme Court struck down a ban. Advocates hoped voters in the trend-setting megastate would reject the amendment, known as Proposition 8. But it passed, 52 percent to 48 percent.

And yet the landscape for marriage equality isn't as bleak as the result in California might suggest. Yesterday, Connecticut recorded its first same-sex marriages, under an October ruling by that state's highest court that gay couples could not be offered civil unions while being denied full civil marriage.

And while basic rights, such as the freedom to marry, should not be decided by popular vote, advocates should take heart in the defeat in Connecticut last week of a ballot question backed by opponents of same-sex marriage. The measure wasn't a referendum on marriage equality; it merely called for a state constitutional convention. But same-sex marriage advocates made it clear in their ads that the convention could be used to bring about a ban.

In California, the best hope now is probably another ballot campaign to repeal the newly enacted ban. Advocates of same-sex marriage there will have to reach out in particular to African-Americans, who voted by wide margins for Proposition 8.

But public opinion has shifted dramatically in the direction of equality. What had been a red-hot controversy in this state largely vanished after the Legislature voted down a ban last year. "Our experience in Massachusetts," says MassEquality executive director Marc Solomon, "is that there's only one way to go on this issue, and that's up." There is every reason to think that, over time, equality will prevail in California - and beyond.