SOUNDING OFF:

It was a landmark decision from the Supreme Court. It challenged assumptions, traditions, and — as some saw it — one of America’s, and God’s, most sacred institutions. From the public and the press, responses came swiftly and passionately, some heralding the move as a victory for justice, many others decrying it as an affront and an abomination.

“No power on earth can compel [us] to do something that is against the law of God and nature,” wrote one newspaper’s editor soon after the ruling was issued. “The Supreme Court, in its deadly coil, is about to strike down our sacred traditions,” said a letter in another.

A United States senator lamented, “The justices abandoned their role as judges of the law and organized themselves into a group of social engineers.”

And a noted religious leader got straight to the point: “I don’t think these judges are able to prove that their decision pleases God.”

But they weren’t talking about the California Supreme Court’s May 16 decision to legalize same-gender marriage. They were talking about Brown vs. Board of Education, the United States Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling that school segregation was unlawful and unjust.

Today, those reactions seem old-fashioned at best — but they sound eerily similar to some of the objections to marriage equality that we’ve heard since May, and that we’ll hear even more as November nears. In 1954, opponents of desegregation frequently invoked the Bible, warned of the dangers to children and families, and decried the bucking of a tradition that had served them handsomely for centuries. In 2008, the issue at hand has changed, but the rhetoric, sadly, hasn’t.

Those who believed, half a century ago, that a policy of “separate but equal” adequately fulfilled America’s best promise were, most of us now agree, on the wrong side of history. Today we recognize their passionate defense of tradition as a function more of anxiety than of integrity. And few us would argue that a loving God would cast a disapproving eye upon the march toward equality.

Then, some feared that the American way of life was disappearing. Now, we understand that it was only beginning to come into fullness.

This November, as we vote on Proposition 8, Californians have the opportunity to be on the right side of history — to make a decision that our children and grandchildren, a half-century from now, can recall with pride, not embarrassment. You need not be personally comfortable with the notion of same-gender marriage to vote against the amendment; you need only be willing to acknowledge — as future generations surely will, regardless of what happens in November — that marriage, like education, is a fundamental right.

Our “no” votes on Proposition 8 represent a refusal to enshrine inequality in our state constitution — and an abiding faith that the “tradition” most worth preserving is our nation’s long history of moving, steadily if not always simply, toward the light of fairness and freedom.

ELIZA RUBENSTEIN lives in Costa Mesa.