Hawaii legislators are prepared to vote on whether to legalize same-sex civil unions, which may be a popular but legally questionable compromise. Gov. Linda Lingle says the Legislature would be distracted by the issue and should concentrate on the economy, but legislatures are designed to take on many issues in a general session and should not use such an excuse to ignore hot ones—particularly one left so dramatically unfinished at the end of last session.

The controversy surfaces as a federal court in San Francisco begins hearing evidence on the issue of whether California's Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriages violates the U.S. Constitution. The lawsuit is expected to go before the U.S. Supreme Court next year.

Hawaii's Supreme Court ruled in 1993 that the state was obligated to explain why homosexual marriages should be forbidden. The Legislature approved a ban of gay marriages in 1997 and voters approved a state constitutional amendment giving legislators that authority the following year, essentially ratifying the prohibition.

Since then, acceptance of gay marriages or civil unions has found acceptance in other states, but proponents have suffered recent setbacks. Legislators in Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine voted last year to join Massachusetts and Connecticut in favor of allowing gay marriages and Iowa's supreme court legalized them. However, Maine voters rejected the measure at the ballot box and New Jersey's senate last week defeated legalizing same-sex marriages.

National attitudes have changed significantly since nearly 70 percent of Hawaii voters favored the 1998 measure. In a New York Times/CBS News poll last year, 33 percent said gay couples should be allowed to legally marry and 30 percent said they should be allowed to enter into civil unions but not marriage, while only 32 percent said gay couples should have no legal recognition.

The constitutionality of civil unions is questionable. They are clearly “;separate but equal,”; a practice that was shot down as a defense in cases of racial discrimination by the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education.

The Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that gay couples who had been granted civil unions had the right to marry. A New Jersey commission found “;overwhelming evidence”; a year ago that civil unions had not provided the same protection as marriage.

The debate, then action, in Hawaii's Legislature would provide a valuable barometer on the issue. Legislators are paid to make tough decisions—not evade them to the exclusion point of one issue. This one needs to be addressed.