Several National and California Gay Activist Groups are urging gay people not to instigate gay marriage cases in the forty eight states where same sex marriage is not legal. The fear is that the issue has not gained enough traction nationally to influence the conservative court justices. For instance, arguably in the most conservative and large two States, Florida and Texas, gay marriage has small chance of judicial support. (At Right: Elton John and husband, David Furnish.)

The game plan here is to get the more progressive states to accept gay marriage before making it a national issue. The proverbial camel must at first just get its nose in the tent.

On one hand this seems like a very conservative plan, and I'm reminded of Martin L. King, Jr., and his pivotal writing: Letter from a Birmingham Jail where he advised that there was no slowing down of the civil rights movement and to do so would be to go backwards.

On the other hand, gay civil rights are very different circumstances. MLK had three US Constitutional Amendments to stand on plus Brown v. the Board of Education ruling of the Supreme Court. There was no chance of losing a court case involving civil rights for African Americans. The law was with them; the die had been cast.

Gay Marriage is a new thing under the sun. Unbelievably, not even all gay people are supporting it. The very idea of it rails against the grain of the religious thought of many Americans, who still fail to see that civil marriage can be allowed without somehow violating the "sanctity" of their religious places of worship where clergymen can always refuse to perform any weddings they choose for whatever reasons they may have.

In pushing for gay marriage, perhaps it is best to err on the side of caution and patiently play the waiting game. We know that history is on our side. We are out of the closet, and we will never go back. It is only a matter of time before the homophobes and unenlightened will have to accept the fact that we are here, we pay taxes, and we deserve the chose of marriage if we wish.