Gay marriage will soon be legal across the United States. This is not a prophecy of things to come in our lifetimes or even in the next generation. This change will occur in a matter of months, not years.

Believe it or not, the debate over whether to discriminate against gay marriage is nearly dead. Even as President Bush has advocated a constitutional amendment against gay marriage, the House has accepted civil unions as an alternative.

Civil unions confer all of the legal rights, responsibilities and protections afforded to heterosexual marriage. So all we are truly left with then is a constitutional debate about whether to confer the word “marriage” to homosexual unions recognized under the law.

The word “marriage” does still separate millions of people. It also raises the question, as the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has noted, of whether civil unions can be separate but equal counterparts to “marriages.”

But the real news is the consensus, and not the division, which now exists. In 2000, in what seemed to be a breathtaking development, Vermont legalized civil unions. Now, civil unions are broadly accepted in both political parties and, according to a recent poll, the American public.

By accepting civil unions in order to establish a last line of defense at the word “marriage,” the opponents of gay marriage have unwittingly exposed the illogic and emptiness of their resistance. The majority in this country now lacks the stomach, or perhaps the good manners, to openly advocate unequal treatment under the law for gays. Unable or unwilling to articulate the case for actual discrimination, the opponents of gay marriage are left to argue about nomenclature.

As a result, politicians, with Bush and Sen. John Kerry leading the way, can only offer the circular reasoning that gay marriage should be banned because marriage is by definition between a man and a woman. That such assertions merely restate the question rather than answer it appears to disturb the mind of almost nobody in either house of Congress. They are out of ideas, content to cling to tradition so long as they see some political advantage in it.

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As the politicians hold forth whether to apply the label of “marriage” to homosexual unions, the will to continue this bickering will soon disappear. When San Francisco began to issue marriage licenses to gays, hundreds of couples quickly flew to that city. As they stood in hours-long lines, sleeping sometimes on the sidewalk overnight, their quiet dignity surely won a few converts to their cause.

There comes a time when events, inspired by an irresistible idea, overtake the plans and strategies of politicians. Fifteen years ago, the Berlin Wall fell not because any government planned to destroy it. Instead, a few renegade leaders in Hungary simply opted not to shoot their people if they tried to leave the country. With that decision, hundreds of miles of barbed wire, watchtowers and armed guards that composed the Iron Curtain became moot.

Thousands of people, including East Germans piling into tiny, 26-horsepower automobiles, took the long route out of their country, through Hungary and to the West. It took the smallest opportunity to unleash this wave of migration because communism had long proven to be an empty promise. In just a few months, it was all gone. The East German government, the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet stranglehold over Eastern Europe toppled with the ease of a man knocking over a rotten stump with his foot.

And so it will happen with the edifice of heterosexual-only marriage. Once a single state recognizes gay marriages – Massachusetts will probably be the first – there will be a flood of committed couples, all seeking to take on the joys and heavy responsibilities of marriage.

Then the battle will shift to whether other states will, as they do now, recognize marriages solemnized in other states. They may have to; the Constitution may require it. Even if other states are not forced to recognize these marriages, engaging in litigation to stamp out each of these unions will soon fade away.

The opponents of gay marriage, fighting over nomenclature, will never match the resolve of those who desire the blessings of marriage and acceptance of the community.

Whether our leaders lead this change, or are overtaken by it, will matter little in the long run. Gay marriage is coming soon, and we will be better for it.

Alex J. Grant, a native of Standish, works as an attorney in Washington, D.C.