Under the gaydar: how gays won the right to raise children without conservatives even noticing.

• Author: Gash, Alison

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No one knows for sure how the Supreme Court will rule on the two high-profile gay marriage cases it is now considering. The betting, however, is that, regardless of the outcome, progress toward marriage equality will persist. A majority of the public now believe gays and lesbians should have the right to wed. Nine states and the District of Columbia have laws on the books conferring such rights. A stampede of Democratic elected officials have announced support for same-sex marriage, and in its March "autopsy" report the Republican National Committee hinted its members should do the same.

Although progress has been unusually swift, this story of same-sex marriage rights has followed a familiar path, one blazed by women and African Americans in their struggles for equality. Members of an out-group, advocating for their rights, demand a fundamental change in the legal interpretation of the Constitution, which causes a series of high-profile court cases, state and federal laws, and counter-laws, all of it accompanied by a broadly held national conversation that leads to a change in public attitudes, laws, and legal interpretations.

But this isn't the only way that civil rights advance. A few decades ago, openly gay and lesbian Americans did not have the legal right to raise their own biological children, much less adopt. Today, more than twenty-five states recognize the same legal benefits and responsibilities of parenthood regardless of sexual orientation. It is now routine for gays and lesbians to jointly adopt, to be recognized as co-parents, and to collect child support or demand custody or visitation rights-even without a biological connection to the child in question. All this has happened without the hallmarks of a traditional rights campaign. There were very few high-profile court cases, few legislative battles, and little public debate. In sharp contrast to marriage equality--where between 1993 and 2003 two pro-marriage rulings incited more than thirty-five state bans--parenting litigation has provoked minimal public backlash.

At first blush, this would seem improbable. Gay marriage, after all, is between consenting adults, whereas gay adoption involves children; one would think society would be at least as skittish about the latter as about the former. Even countries that pioneered marriage equality, such at Denmark, have been slower to extend full parenting rights to same-sex couples. And yet, paradoxically, in the United States we've seen the opposite: we've had a contentious, two-decades-long national debate about same-sex marriage--one that has repeatedly featured in battles for the presidency--but have allowed same-sex couples to quietly begin legally adopting and co-parenting with hardly any national discussion at all. Why the difference?

The answer is that same-sex parenting rights have successfully advanced precisely because the legal wrangling over them has remained largely below the radar--a fact highlighted by Justice Antonin Scalia's confusion about whether California even permits same-sex adoption during Supreme Court hearings on that...