The time has finally come, members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBTG) community of Yale.

Starting Wednesday, same-sex marriage licenses will become available in Connecticut. Now, in sickness and in health, LGBTG couples will have all the same rights and privileges of their heterosexual counterparts – something they have longed for for several decades.

The Yale Daily News reports:

Civil unions often have an impact on hospital visitation rights, taxation, equal health coverage and protection rights, said Ben Bernard ’10, a coordinator for Yale’s LGBT Co-Op. Without the right to partake in marriage, gay and lesbian couples often feel like second-class citizens, Bernard said.

“I don’t want ‘gay marriage,’” Bernard said, “I want ‘marriage’ with its same traditional definition, but with its discriminatory barriers removed.”

For Anne Stanback, executive director of Love Makes a Family — a national gay marriage activist group — an eight-year dream of legalizing same sex marriage finally became a reality.

While same-sex civil unions have been allowed in Connecticut since 2005, the legislation did not grant the gay couples the same rights as heterosexual ones. This landmark case, pioneered by eight same-sex couples, has corrected that injustice by any and every legal distinction between a same-sex union and a heterosexual one.

Congratulations to the LGBTG community!

If any Yalies are considering taking the plunge, let us know in the comment box below.

[Photo Credit: Kate Kraft/ Yale Daily News Contributing Photographer]