by Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc.

About the author: The Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc. is a national organization that works to defend the rights of gays, lesbians, and people with HIV through litigation and public education.

Thanks to a historic court case now underway [1996] in Hawaii, lesbians and gay men may be on the verge of winning the right to marry—a basic right still denied them in all fifty states. In the past, other people were refused the right to marry—for example, because of their race—until the law was changed to end this denial of a basic human right. Like non-gay people, gay people need and want the right to marry.

Even once gay men and lesbians finally win this fundamental right&mdash...