For almost nine years, Valerie and Jacqueline Fein-Zachary have considered themselves married. On Monday, the rabbi who conducted an elegant ceremony for the couple in 1996 will make their status official by signing their marriage license - something he can do now that same-sex marriage is legal in Massachusetts.

Finally, says an elated Valerie Fein-Zachary, a physician in Boston, "we're fully equal, fully recognized by the state."

For gays and lesbians across Massachusetts, this dawning of official state recognition of their relationships has produced a week of sheer euphoria. Amid the streamers and confetti, the flowers and well-wishers, it is almost possible to overlook the fact that the status of gay marriage in the state will not be fully settled until voters cast ballots in 2006. It also remains to be seen whether the Massachusetts law will have the domino effect gay-rights advocates hope it will, or whether it will harden resistance of opponents and stir a major backlash.

If US history is any guide, either scenario is possible. History shows that big legal milestones in social movements - from voting rights to interracial marriage to school desegregation to women's rights - often engender resistance, sometimes violent resistance, when they are first enacted. But over time, they do tend to shift the status quo in favor of the minority group, and so, many social historians predict that gay marriage is here to stay.

Legalization of same-sex marriage is a defining moment, and regarded as such by the gay community. But legal experts and activists are thinking beyond the present euphoria to possible ramifications.

Looking back at social movements such as feminism and civil rights, whose progress has been more like the tortoise than the hare, Cheryl Jacques, president of Human Rights Coalition, a gay rights advocacy group, emphasizes the need for time and patience.

"Fifty years after Brown [v. Board of Education], we are still grappling with equal treatment in its true meaning for African-Americans," she says. "Racism didn't go away just because the laws changed, and homophobia won't go away just because the laws change. But it's an important place to start."

Steven Mintz, a professor of history at the University of Houston, cites the legalization of interracial marriage in 1967 as another example of how once-controversial social issues can gain public acceptance.

"To most of my students, it is just inconceivable that there was ever a time when interracial marriages were forbidden," Professor Mintz says. "My suspicion is that in 25 years, gay marriage will be viewed as one of those fundamental turning points in much the same way."

Some activists with long memories trace the beginning of raising public awareness of gays back to June 1969, when five nights of riots involving gay men and police took place outside the Stonewall Inn, a gay gathering place in New York's Greenwich Village. Among other defining moments, they list the 1978 killing of Harvey Milk, a gay city supervisor in San Francisco, and the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay teenager, in Wyoming.

"Each one of those stripped away a layer of denial about whether gay people were truly human, and whether they were worthy," says Gretchen Frasier, president of Greater Boston Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) and mother of a gay son. She calls the legalization of same-sex marriage "a baby step in a long line of stepping forward, stepping back."

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