Talk about a concept rendered quaint by the passage of time, the New Jersey Supreme Court issued a ruling yesterday that instructs the state legislature to create marriage-like legal arrangement for same sex couples. The ruling sounds suspiciously like an order to create a “separate but equal” class for gay Americans:

[The] court gives New Jersey lawmakers six months to create the necessary statutes for same-sex partnerships that are legally equivalent to marriage. Legislators may choose whether the partnerships are called “marriage” — or “civil unions,” as in Vermont.

“The Legislature has played a major role, along with the courts, in ushering marriage into the modern era,” [Justice Barry T.] Albin wrote. “The great engine for social change in this country has always been the democratic process. Although courts can ensure equal treatment, they cannot guarantee social acceptance, which must come through the evolving ethos of a maturing society.”

In 1896, the Supreme Court legalized racial segregation via Plessy vs. Ferguson, which ruled that states that were predominantly bigoted toward African-Americans could prohibit them from using public facilities but that “equal” facilities had to be provided for them. Over the next five decades, states that had been in, or were sympathetic to, the Confederacy had no problem dealing with the “separate” part of the ruling, but never even came close to mustering “equal” schools and other public facilities to blacks. Plessy was overturned, starting with Brown vs. the Board of Education in the 1950s and was put to rest legally with the Civil Rights Act in the mid-1960s.

Let’s hope it won’t take 50 years for Americans to get past their prejudice and fears on the issue of gay marriage.