Calif. Marriage May Be Mirage for Gay Couples

Gay couples should exchange vows warily in California this week, Joe Matthews writes in the Washington Post. “California—with its dysfunctional politics and government—may hurt the cause of same-sex marriage,” he warns. An upcoming state ballot on gay marriage could cast the issue into limbo for years, and leave couples in "an expensive, time-consuming quagmire—gay marriage's Vietnam."

Gay couples who marry this week in California won't have the "same freedoms as heterosexual married couples in California. That's because federal law provides legal recognition only to marriages between a man and a woman. If there's ever going to be true marriage equality in California, the fight that counts most won't take place in Sacramento. For that fight, the battleground is Washington." (More gay marriage stories.)