Comedian Groucho Marx once quipped, “Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who wants to live in an institution?”

The answer to his question: millions of loving gay couples who are legally barred from doing so. Although the recent ruling by the Massachusetts Supreme Court is an important legal step, there needs to be a greater public acceptance before gay marriage or even civil unions will be legalized. To effect change, the gay rights movement needs to emulate the actions taken by the civil rights movement 40 years ago.

The first thing gay rights advocates need is a national leader. Martin Luther King Jr. was synonymous with the civil rights movement, but there is no parallel prominent today in the gay rights movement. A leader puts a human face on the movement.

People didn’t know that blacks had to sit at the backs of buses; people knew that Rosa Parks had to sit at the back of the bus. This is important in changing public opinion. A poll in 1955, less than a year after Brown v. Board of Education, the case in which the court ruled segregation inherently unequal, showed that only 52 percent of people approved of the decision; 44 percent disapproved. Less than a year later, Ms. Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus, and from that point on, public opinion shifted toward accepting desegregation.

The 1960s saw marches, boycotts and sit-ins. By comparison, today’s expression of disapproval with the status quo is tame and ineffective. Marches have been replaced by gay pride parades. While I see the need for homosexuals to express that they are comfortable with their sexuality; these events do little to further the cause of gay rights. More often than not, they just serve as fodder for opponents to wrongly decry the deviance of the homosexual lifestyle.

Boycotts have been replaced by petitions calling for the removal of radio personalities that make homophobic remarks. It would be fair to assume that listeners of homophobic talking heads such as Dr. Laura are some of the least likely to be convinced that civil unions are a good idea. This is hardly the best use of the movement’s time and resources.

Unfortunately, sit-ins have vanished, but sit-in-type protest would be a way to convince the American public that civil unions should be legal. A couple has to go down to a courthouse in order to obtain a marriage license. What if, en masse, loving gay couples went down there to try and get licenses? What if this didn’t happen in just one city, but all over the country?

This would be akin to what happened in Greensboro, N.C., in 1960. It started when four black teenagers sat down at a whites-only lunch counter and they were not served. Eventually, more and more blacks, and even whites, came. Similar sit-ins swept the South, and lunch counters were soon desegregated.

With the advent of 24-hour news, this story would be unavoidable. Just as the issue of segregation was brought into living rooms every morning by the “Little Rock Nine,” so, too, would these demonstrations at city halls be well publicized. Video of the students needing military escort just to go to school was one of the many images that helped to sway public opinion on the issue of segregation.

The public is less staunch in its opposition to gay unions than many think. While it is true that there are more people against civil unions than support them, (53 percent to 41 percent), this Associated Press poll does not tell the whole story.

Another AP poll states that 43 percent of those polled said it would not make any difference in their opinion of a presidential candidate if he supported gay unions. Another 12 percent said support of civil unions would make them more likely to support a candidate.

This poll shows that more than 50 percent of the country is either in favor of civil unions or not against them enough so that it would change their vote for president. These are encouraging numbers. They mean that there is a significant part of the population who could change their minds on this issue to accept gay unions.

In many ways, gay rights are in the same position that civil rights were in the ’50s. Both issues split the country 50-50. Through the actions of many brave people, Americans were shown the inhumanity and injustice of Jim Crow. Discrimination based on color eroded away. The time is ripe for the same kind of change for homosexuals. One can only hope there are still more brave figures, gay and straight, that will make their voices heard. Along with valuing the institution of marriage, our nation should value the virtue of tolerance.

–The writer is a freshman majoring in political science.