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Legal in Connecticut but not Arkansas.

"My Three Sons" was the classic long-running all-American Sunday night family sitcom of the 1960s: Steve Douglas (the beloved Fred MacMurray) is a widower bringing up a trio of obstreperous tykes. When one of the kids marries and leaves home, Steve decides to adopt a new third son. To satisfy the adoption service's insistence that there be a full-time female presence in the home, the Douglas household's cantankerous old caretaker Uncle Charlie (William Demarest) was designated an honorary "housemother."

The situation that fueled the comedy in "My Three Sons" would now be illegal in Arkansas, which last week passed, by popular vote, an amendment forbidding unmarried couples to adopt children.

You could see this as ridiculous, truth truly being stranger than fiction. Indeed, that's how many gay activists are perceiving several setbacks they experienced on Election Day. Yes, a mob of homophobes is still an ugly and common sight. But gay-rights-bashers' bullying tactics don't have the muscle they once did. There are more opportunities for pro-gay forces to fight back and more support when they do.

There are legit major frustrations emanating from last week's voting. But while the bigoted attacks remain, there's no doubt that the landscape of the battleground has changed. Editorials in newspapers and websites from across the country have come to a consensus that the recent voting is not a devastation but a turning point.

"As disappointing as the legal setbacks are," wrote University of Detroit philosophy professor John Corvino in the Los Angeles Times (a piece reprinted last week in the Hartford Courant), "they pale in importance next to the cultural shift undeniably underway. One thing is clear: That shift is on the side of gay and lesbian equality."

On 365gay.com, Ali Davis allowed that "We can be very, very sad about Prop," but hastens to add that "this was the largest movement for LGBT rights in history."

In Connecticut, we have a special perspective. When the state legalized gay marriage just a couple of months ago, it didn't become a campaign issue for either side. In fact, one of the key moments in the much-watched vice presidential debate was Gwen Ifill pushing Biden and Palin to state that they in fact agreed on the basic tenets of gay civil rights. Neither candidate sanctioned gay marriage, but the fact that they both endorsed civil unions was a huge leap forward from 2004.

After years of Connecticut trying to filch California's film industry, it seemed as if we had a shot at swiping their gay marriage business as well. Fifty-two percent of voting Californians passed Proposition 8 on Nov. 4, banning gay marriage just a few months after the state's Supreme Court passed it.

That can't happen here. We may not have been the first state to legalize gay marriage, but we did it in a way that's hard to undo. Connecticut's roughest challenge to the concept was the vague possibility that it might be debated at a quirky constitutional gathering the state rarely bothers to hold. Even that last-ditch effort was thwarted.

If you want further proof of how sturdy the gay marriage decision is in Connecticut, note that the Knights of Columbus, whose international headquarters is here in New Haven, contributed a million bucks towards California's Prop 8, while the entire anti-Constitutional Convention war chest was in the mere tens of thousands. The local battle didn't even rate comment on the KoC website, where that Catholic organization credited itself with supporting the anti-gay agenda in Arizona, California, Arkansas and elsewhere. Ironically, the Knights' site (kofc.org) is now featuring a post-election pronouncement from Supreme Knight Carl A. Anderson framing Obama's presidency as a civil rights victory. "Having had the privilege of serving on the United States Commission on Civil Rights, I believe that we cannot understate the importance of the election in this regard," Anderson writes.

Hmmm, you cannot understate but perhaps you underestimate. The gay identity struggle is well out of its no-rights-at-all phase, decades past its milestone liberation demonstrations, no longer an impediment to a career as a businessman or talkshow host and now being taken seriously about separate-but-equal concerns. If the history of other civil rights battles can be used as a framework, the next step is widespread unfettered respect and acceptance.

Real debate, real legal questions, honest reevaluations of what have become cultural realties... these are massive improvements in the discourse around gay rights. Keep the talk alive. More votes and more courtroom discussions will come, and they won't be as disappointing.

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