by William N. Eskridge Jr.

About the author: William N. Eskridge Jr. is a professor at Georgetown Law Center in Washington, D.C., and the author of The Case for Same-Sex Marriage.

Same-sex marriage is good for gay people and good for America, and for the same reason: It civilizes gays and it civilizes America.1 Start with the former. For most of the twentieth century, lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals have been outlaws. The law relevant to us was the criminal code—not just sodomy prohibitions, which virtually defined us, but also disorderly conduct, lewdness, and vagrancy statutes, infractions of which led to employment and licensing penalties. The law relevant to us today is found in the civil code, most prominently in antidiscrimination statutes but increasingly in family law as well. Virtually no one in the gay...