"legal marriage remains unlikely for the foreseeable future"

From a Newsweek cover story, "The Future of Gay America," March 12, 1990:

Gay leaders all agree that "coming out" is the most important political and personal act anyone can make. Beyond that, however, there is widespread disagreement over how best to live outside the closet. Should gays pursue their own countercultural lifestyle in such urban ghettos as San Francisco's Castro district, or assimilate into the dominant straight culture? Should they continue--within the bounds of safe sex--to have multiple partners or emulate heterosexual monogamy? . . .

The ultimate act of assimilation would be marriage, a right some gays have placed on their future agenda. The impetus comes partly from AIDS, which revealed the degree to which gays did not have the rights straights take for granted. The partners of gay men who died intestate found they had no claims on property that would have gone to a spouse; others found themselves evicted from apartments because they weren't on the lease. . . . Seven U.S. cities, Los Angeles and Seattle among them, now have "domestic partnership" laws that grant gays a variety of spousal rights including insurance benefits, bereavement leaves and credit agreements.

Given the objections of church and state, legal marriage remains unlikely for the foreseeable future. In the meantime, gays themselves are divided over whether marriage hetero style is even desirable. Many in the community oppose quasi-straight unions, on the ground that they are too imitative and not uniquely gay. But Frank Kameny, a veteran gay activist, sees no reason why homosexuals can't have the whole package: "I've never heard a rational explanation for the prejudice against them--after all, marriage licenses arent's rationed, so we wouldn't be taking them from someone else." In The New Republic last year, Andrew Sullivan argued that marriage was not only good for gays but for society at large, because it would promote sexual and economic stability.