Earlier this week, the California Supreme Court ruled against two physicians who allegedly denied -- based on their religious opposition -- a legal medical treatment to a patient based on her sexual orientation.

This is a welcome, if unusual, turnabout in a disturbing trend that has characterized American medicine over the last three or so decades: an increasing willingness to allow the actions of individuals to disadvantage, and even endanger, others if those actions derive from religious faith.

This summer, a "pharmacy for life" was set to open in the suburbs of Washington. Like other similar pharmacies, it won't stock condoms, contraceptives or the so-called morning-after contraceptive Plan B, despite the fact that pharmacies are licensed by state governments giving them the exclusive right to dispense medications.

In exchange for these monopoly rights, pharmacists have an ethical obligation to act in the interests of patients.

Recent studies have shown that 14% of U.S. doctors, when confronted by possibly objectionable but legal medical treatments, not only would refuse to deliver such care but also would refuse to inform their patients about it or refer them to physicians who would deliver the care.

That translates to about 40 million people who would receive substandard care from these physicians, who believe that their religious convictions are more important than the well-being of their patients.

The tradition of religious freedom in the United States is one of the founding ideals of this country.

But as our framers envisioned it, religious freedom referred to a right to practice one's own religion free of interference from others. It did not refer to religiously based interference with the rights of others, who may have their own and different religious traditions.

So it's time to say "enough." In the United States, we all are free to practice our religion as we see fit, as long as we do not interfere with the well-being of others by imposing our religious views on them.

This leaves doctors who hold certain religious beliefs in an uncomfortable situation, one they can best manage by helping individual patients find the best practitioners for their specific medical needs.

But if they do perform such procedures, they cannot provide them to some groups of patients and not to others.

It is true that artificial insemination is an elective procedure, not a matter of saving life or limb, but that's not the issue here.

A clothing store may choose not to sell polo shirts. But once it sells polo shirts, it cannot withhold them from customers based on their race, religion, sexual orientation and so forth.

Doctors may not discriminate against gays and lesbians in medical treatment, even if the procedures being sought conflict with physicians' religious beliefs, the California Supreme Court decided today.

In the second, major gay-rights victory this year, the state high court said religious physicians must obey a state law that bars businesses from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation.

The decision stemmed from a lawsuit filed by Guadalupe T. Benitez, an Oceanside lesbian who lives with her partner and wanted to become pregnant with donated sperm.

Benitez, 36, and now the mother of three, said she has been pursuing her case for 10 years.

"This isn't just a win for me personally and for other lesbian women," she said. "It's a win for everyone, because anyone could be the next target if doctors are allowed to pick and choose their patients based on religious views about other groups of people."

Kenneth R. Pedroza, who represented the doctors, predicted that many doctors would simply refuse to do the insemination procedure at all.

Many will return home to states which explicitly reject same-sex unions. Major gay-rights groups are urging them not to rush into lawsuits demanding that their marriages be recognized. Lawyers warn that they may have difficulty divorcing if things go awry.

"When Jennie would tell co-workers we're domestic partners, people would say 'Oh, that's nice,' but they don't really get what that means," Sarda-Sorensen said.

Worried that their court victory in California could be offset by defeats elsewhere, a coalition of nine national gay-rights groups last week issued an appeal - titled "Make Change, Not Lawsuits" - to gays and lesbians considering California marriages.

"Couples who want to should get married, call themselves married, and ask - sometimes demand - that family, friends, neighbors, businesses, employers and the community treat their marriages with respect," the statement said.

Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, said litigation by newly married same-sex couples "should be an absolute last resort" - reserved only for cases where there is grievous injustice and a realistic chance of prevailing in court.

Hunt's advice helped dissuade Regina Cassanova and Jheri Dupart not to venture to California, though the partners of more than 10 years had been thrilled by the historic court ruling there.

"Even though we want the legal protection, maybe this isn't the right time for us," said Cassanova, 27. "Living in Texas, we could lose rights if we married in another state."

The couple hopes Texas will change its policy, but they're prepared to move elsewhere if necessary when they're ready to have children, Cassanova said.

Also planning a California wedding — date to be determined by availability of discount airfare — are Bonnie Aspen, 55, and Willow Williams, 48, of Spokane, Wash. They've been together 29 years, and registered last year as domestic partners when Washington adopted that policy.

"Getting a marriage license is one more step to help our state and the rest of the country move forward.”

“In another 20 years this country will be very embarrassed by what it put some of its people through."

From San Diego to San Francisco, couples [missing a bride or groom] readied their formal wear, local licensing clerks expanded their staffs and conservative groups warned of a backlash as the nation's most populous state prepared to join Massachusetts in [neutering marriage licensing].

"We might wait a long time in Tennessee, so this is our chance," said Robert Blaudow, of Memphis. He and his partner, Derek Norman, 23, decided to get married at the Alameda County clerk's office late Monday while they were in the San Francisco Bay Area for a conference.

On Monday, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who helped launch the series of lawsuits that led the court to strike down California's one-man-one-woman marriage laws, presided at the wedding of Del Martin, 87, and Phyllis Lyon, 83.

Images from gay weddings, said Lorri L. Jean, chief executive of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, could be used by opponents in a campaign designed to persuade California voters that gays and lesbians should not have the right to marry.

"The more that homosexual activists wave their hijacked marriage licenses in people's faces, the more people will say, 'This isn't right. . . . What can I do about this?' " said Randy Thomasson, the founder of the Campaign for Children and Families.

Proponents predict just the opposite will happen, that when voters witness the love and commitment involved in the marriages, they will be won over and won't vote to disallow them.

Strategists cite polls showing that in 2004, after Massachusetts allowed gay marriage, people who saw the weddings became more supportive.

"All you had to do was just see it, and it was very difficult to then walk away and say, 'That is not a wonderful thing,' " said Eric Jay, an advisor to San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom.

During the campaign for Proposition 22, the successful 2000 initiative that defined marriage as between a man and a woman, Quinn said many Californians were appalled by images of groups like the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a group of gay male activists who dressed up like nuns.

By design, San Francisco's first wedding, officiated by Newsom, was of octogenarian lesbians Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, who have been together for more than half a century.

"One of the things about the gay and lesbian community is we're known for our outrageousness, our flamboyance," said West Hollywood City Councilman John Duran, who is president of the board of directors of Equality California, an organization pushing for same-sex marriage.

Political analysts said the anti-same-sex marriage side also needs to manage its image by downplaying its fringe elements.

"This is the last frontier," said gay Los Angeles Councilman Bill Rosendahl, who attended the wedding.

"Women got the right to vote, black people got the right to vote, now gay people can get married."

For many years, Lyon, 83, and Martin, 87, couldn't hold hands or embrace on the street. They lived in fear of being outed, labeled as "dirty" or "q u e e r."

A same-sex wedding celebration would have been as unthinkable as flying to Mars when the couple met.

Butte County, however, indicated that it would follow the lead of Kern County in halting its practice of performing marriage ceremonies altogether, citing budget reasons.

San Diego County, which is allowing appointments and walk-ins for marriage licenses, already has started feeling the crunch: 160 couples have made appointments for Tuesday, surpassing the Valentine's Day crush of 151 couples.

Sonoma County, along with at least three others, is starting early, issuing licenses and performing ceremonies beginning at 5:01 p.m. Monday, the moment the court order officially takes effect.

State officials are not allowing counties to post new online marriage license applications, which replace the words "bride and groom" with "Party A and Party B," until the order takes effect Monday evening.

To my eyes, and many others', Barnett is locking the doors on the county's low-cost marriages for any and all affianced couples because she doesn't want anything to do with same-sex marriages.

She wants to not have her wedding cake and keep everyone else from eating it too.

The Bakersfield Californian’s reporting, which includes e-mails from the county clerk's office to a conservative Christian legal defense fund, shows that Barnett first asked the county's legal counsel to petition the state Supreme Court to put the brakes on its gay marriage ruling. Then she tried to resign the clerk part of her job -- the part that handles marriages.

If she's against gay marriage, I'd have more regard for her if she just said, "I think it's an affront to God and I won't perform any or let them be performed by my office. So sue me." And someone would, and then others would rally to her defense, and she could be a real martyr instead of a bureaucratic weenie.

I called Barnett to get her side of all this, but her home phone had been disconnected, and the message I left at her office wasn't returned.

My favorite was when she said, apropos of the state Supreme Court decision: "It was not unanimous."

But "majority" doesn't mean infallible, let alone constitutional. In 1964, Californians voted 2 to 1 to change the state Constitution to let property owners discriminate against any buyer or renter for any reason -- race, gender, religion, even shoe size, I suppose.

One week later, the federal government cut off all housing funds to California,

The California Supreme Court today rejected a petition to delay its historic same-sex [“]marriage[“] decision, deciding 4-3 that gay people may [“]marry[“] later this month.