Civil compromise: in Connecticut and Oregon, lawmakers who oppose same-sex marriage back civil unions.

Gay rights activists in Connecticut initially pushed lawmakers there to legalize marriage for same-sex couples. But when support for the idea was less than warm, they compromised on a civil unions bill.

On April 20 the state's Republican governor, M. Jodi Rell, signed the groundbreaking legislation, making Connecticut the second state after Vermont to offer gays and lesbians civil unions--all the fights of marriage but without the name--and the first to do so without court order. (Other states, such as California, offer various rights under domestic-partnership laws.)

"I have said all along that I believe in no discrimination of any kind, and I think that this bill accomplishes that while at the same time preserving the traditional language that a marriage is between a man and a woman," Rell said.

She referred to an eleventh-hour amendment that added the marriage definition to the bill--a necessary compromise for lawmakers and voters across the country who support the idea of legal protections for same-sex couples but believe marriage should be limited to straight couples. The Connecticut gay rights group Love Makes a Family issued a statement commending state lawmakers while noting that the bill was still a compromise on full equalitY and that they would continue to "work toward the day when there are not two lines at town hall--one for them and one for us."

A similar story is unfolding in Oregon, where gay rights activists who pushed for marriage were defeated on April 14 when the state supreme court nullified more than 3,000 marriage licenses issued to gay and lesbian couples in Multnomah County last year. The court cited a state constitutional amendment, recently approved by voters, banning marriage for gays, but left open the possibilitY of civil unions.

Indeed, less than 24 hours before the ruling, the state's Democratic governor, Ted Kulongoski, and a bipartisan group of state senators had introduced a bill to create civil unions. Kulongoski acknowledges that the bill "may be a little ahead of its time," said his spokeswoman, Holly Armstrong, but the governor also predicts that the speed of social change would soon make legal protection for same-sex relationships a reality in Oregon, if not immediately through marriage.

Tim Smith and Kent Kullby, who were married in a lavish ceremony in Eugene with a license from Multnomah County last year, had hoped the Oregon supreme court would recognize their marriage license. Now they are reluctantly accepting the idea of civil unions.

They are a "separate but equal" approach that ultimately won't stand, said Smith, 51, a small-business owner in Eugene. "But we're realists. Social change occurs incrementally."