This weekend, as Pride festivities go on around our city, we have much to celebrate.

A federal judge is expected to rule soon in the legal battle to overturn Proposition 8 on the grounds that it is rooted in discrimination, thereby making it unconstitutional. Earlier this month, a federal appeals court judge in Massachusetts struck down a section of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, saying it interferes with states’ rights to set their own laws on marriage. And our armed forces appear to be moving toward recognizing the right to freedom and dignity that they fight all over the world to preserve, with the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy on its way out.

Our family has much to celebrate as well. Lisa and her longtime partner Meaghan recently committed to spending their lives together by legally getting married in Vermont. In the spring we celebrated with a wedding here in San Diego with family and friends.

The support of our community and progress on the legal front fills us with hope that society is finally recognizing that anything less than total equality for gays and lesbians is a failure to live up to our American ideals.

Yet as we inch closer to ending discrimination, we know we’ve hardly arrived. If the judge in the Prop 8 trial overturns the law, we know that those who put so much force and money behind codifying discrimination will continue the fight all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court.

We are painfully aware of the pockets of opposition to same-sex marriage that persist in the United States. Just a day before the federal judge in Massachusetts ruled against DOMA, Hawaii’s governor vetoed a civil union bill passed by the state Legislature, saying she had been “open and consistent in my opposition to same gender marriage” and found the proposed civil unions to be “essentially marriage by another name.”

But certainly, there has been progress, and this Pride Week, it’s time to take stock of how far we’ve come over the last decade and look forward to coming victories over inequality.

If there’s one thing we know, it’s that when issues of human dignity are involved, hearts and minds can change overnight. We must persist in our efforts to help people understand that our very values as a society dictate that we grant LGBT people the right to live, love and be part of a healthy family.

Have a great Pride weekend!