The Connecticut Supreme Court today (Friday, October 10) ruled that same-sex couples in Connecticut must be able to obtain marriage licenses the same as straight couples can.

The decision marks the third state to guarantee equal protection in marriage licensing for same-sex couples - both a legal and political victory for the LGBT community. And the political victory comes at a particularly helpful time - less than four weeks away from the vote on California's Proposition 8 on whether to reverse that state's supreme court decision recognizing equal marriage rights.

The Connecticut decision was a 4-3, with the three dissenting justices each submitting their own brief.

The majority, however, concluded that, "Our conventional understanding of marriage must yield to a more contemporary appreciation of the rights entitled to constitutional protection."

"Interpreting our state constitutional provisions in accordance with firmly established equal protection principles," said the majority, "leads inevitably to the conclusion that gay persons are entitled to marry the otherwise qualified same-sex partner of their choice. To decide otherwise would require us to apply one set of constitutional principles to gay persons and another to all others. The guarantee of equal protection under the law, and our obligation to uphold that command, forbids us from doing so. In accordance with these state constitutional requirements, same-sex couples cannot be denied the freedom to marry.

Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, a Boston-based gay litigation group, filed the lawsuit, Kerrigan v. Connecticut , on behalf of Elizabeth Kerrigan and her partner Joanne Mock, and six other same-sex couples. The couples attempted to obtain marriage licenses in Connecticut just after the Massachusetts marriage decision went into effect in 2004 but were refused.

Bennett Klein, an attorney for New England's Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, which led the Massachusetts case, Goodridge, said the California and Connecticut cases are "identical."

In fact, the Connecticut decision relied on the California decision and cited it.

"They are the only two states in which marriage litigation took place in the context of a state system that paralleled marriage," said Klein. In California, it was domestic partnership; in Connecticut, it is civil unions. When he argued the Connecticut marriage case - Kerrigan v. Connecticut - the justices "keyed in on" the significance of this parallel system, said Klein. "And there was a lot of discussion about heightened scrutiny for sexual orientation discrimination, and about the inadequacy of calling the relationships for same-sex couples by a different name."

The California Supreme Court, in its landmark decision in May, said laws banning same-sex marriage discriminate against gay people as a suspect class and impinge on their fundamental right to have "their family relationship accorded the same respect and dignity enjoyed by an opposite-sex couple." The California court then concluded that the state's rationale for treating gays different - to retain a traditional and well-established definition of marriage - cannot be seen as either compelling or necessary.

San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera, whose office argued on behalf of same-sex couples in the California case, applauded Friday's decision.

"It is vindication, not simply for our efforts but for the principled independence of California's judiciary, that another state has affirmed its constitution's promise of equality. With this ruling today, Connecticut's highest court called the marriage exclusion of gay and lesbian couples exactly what it is: discrimination," Herrera said in a statement.

No on 8, Equality for All, the coalition fighting California's Prop 8, also hailed the ruling.

"Today, another state recognized that same-sex couples have the fundamental right to marry," No on 8 executive committee member Geoff Kors said in a statement. "We believe - as do millions of our fellow Californians - that laws should not treat people differently, and we're thrilled that loving couples in Connecticut now have the same fundamental rights as everyone in California."

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom also praised the decision. "Today, the Connecticut Supreme Court took a historic step by joining California and Massachusetts in the fight to provide marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples," he said in a statement. "The court's decision to overturn Connecticut's ban on equal marriage rights indicates that all across the country, communities are reaching the conclusion that separate is not equal, and that we should not harm our friends, neighbors and coworkers by denying them equal treatment under the law."

"Our task now is to protect marriage equality at the ballot box in California by voting no on Proposition 8," Newsom added.

Connecticut's case was argued May 14, 2007, but conspicuously absent from that panel was the court's new chief justice, Chase T. Rogers.

Rogers recused herself because members of her husband's law firm, Robinson & Cole, authored a friend-of-the-court brief for the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund. Lambda is a national organization that supports gay marriage and has been involved in lawsuits in six states where same-sex couples sought the right to marry.