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On Tuesday, that changed. Massachusetts' highest court recognized that the statute allowed illegal discrimination. It ruled 4-3 that denying same-sex couples the privileges of married couples violates their guarantee of equal protection under the state constitution. The court gave the legislature 180 days to eliminate the inequity.

The decision fuels a highly charged national debate over legalizing same-sex marriages. But the renewed controversy risks obscuring a gross injustice that can be addressed effectively without wading into the divisive issue of gay marriage.

The civil rights of individuals across the USA are violated routinely because of sexual orientation. States can end that discrimination by ensuring that their laws treat gay and heterosexual couples equally.

Such equality is rare today. A 1997 study by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, identified more than 1,000 protections, rights and benefits for married couples in federal law. Hundreds more are written into state laws.

Gay couples don't have the right to make health and financial decisions — even funeral arrangements — for each other. Property and inheritance laws deny them protections granted married neighbors, no matter how brief or estranged the marriage.

By contrast, Gloria Bailey and Linda Davies of Orleans, Mass., have lived happily together for 32 years. Now they face retirement and worry what will happen if one of them becomes ill or dies. Such concerns prompted the two to join Goodridge, her partner and five other Massachusetts couples to file suit two years ago after they were denied marriage licenses in their efforts to have their relationships treated like heterosexual unions.

A similar suit in Vermont four years ago prompted the state legislature to enact a pioneering "civil unions" law that granted gay couples most of the rights and responsibilities conferred on married couples. Domestic-partner laws in California, Hawaii, Connecticut and the District of Columbia are positive steps in the same direction.

Advocates of gay marriage hailed the ruling Tuesday as a landmark advancement of their cause. But the case also has galvanized opponents who want to protect heterosexual marriage by perpetuating discrimination against gays.

The opponents are promoting an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would overturn any state law that treats gay and married couples equally. For the first time since the end of slavery, it would insert language in the Constitution defining one group of Americans as legally inferior to others.

Activists on both sides who engage in semantic arguments about the definition of marriage threaten a pressing need: to erase the discrimination against gay couples that is common in state and federal laws. A nation that proclaims its dedication to equality for all has no place drawing legal distinctions between gay and heterosexual partners who are similarly committed and loving.