The Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled Nov. 18 that the state’s ban on gay and lesbian marriages was unconstitutional, a move that earned homosexual couples in the state the benefits enjoyed by heterosexual couples and opened a constitutional debate that affects the entire nation.

The Court’s ruling, according to legal scholars, went beyond Vermont’s 1999 decision to allow gays to join under the term “civil union,” granting instead full “marriage” rights. This small distinction, basically the right to be married in a church by clergy rather than in a city hall, is key to the gay union debate and necessary for the gay population to enjoy the same rights as the rest of society.

Gays, lesbians and bisexuals should be allowed the right to marry and enjoy all the social and financial benefits such a union entails. While they are guaranteed these rights in a civil union, the term makes a distinction between homosexual and heterosexual relationships and a religious judgment on the relationship between gay partners — two things the government has absolutely no right to do.

Calling a “civil union” between two homosexuals the same as a “marriage” between two heterosexuals is reminiscent of the “separate but equal” claim for African American-only schools in the first half of the twentieth century. Without all the rights, including the freedom to practice the religious aspect of marriage if one so chooses, a civil union is inherently unequal to a marriage — a situation that should be government’s job to correct, not enact.

Religious pressure is a huge factor in the case of gay marriages. The Christian Right and its government advocates, including President Bush and numerous U.S. senators, are using the government to preserve and expound religious beliefs about marriage and limit the rights of those with whom they disagree. The fact that this group is exerting such power on the government is a threat to the separation of church and state and is a threat to our freedom as we know it. Christian marriage values, seen in bans on gay unions and in the creation of civil unions, have no place in government doctrine on such issues. Once a gay or lesbian couple decides to get married, a specific church has every right to deny them marriage, but the church cannot collude with the government to deny gay marriages from the start.

The Massachusetts Supreme Court made the right choice striking down the ban on gay and lesbian marriages. The government’s duty is to protect the equal rights of all its people — not to protect the so-called religious sanctity of a social tradition at the cost of social and financial benefits. All states and the federal government should allow nothing short of full marriage rights for all citizens, no matter what their sexual orientation.