We bask in the afterglow of an election that was a victory for democracy: This time around, no one disputes that a clear winner emerged. And if Barack Obama's victory is a landmark achievement on the long road from slavery to racial equality -- and I believe it is -- no one should imagine that we have undone the legacy of three-fifths citizenship, Jim Crow, "separate but equal" and redlining, and have now awakened in some utopia of complete racial justice. Far from it.

Yet the mother of all glass ceilings has been broken. Alas, such ceilings do not vanish the moment they get their first or even second and third crack. The shards that remain even after a ceiling is totally shattered are sharp and cutting. And as one of the first openly gay college presidents, I know something about glass ceilings, however much lower and of lesser moment the barrier a small number of us have now broken.

I'm not alone in observing that although the country has taken a clear step forward in one area, in at least four states, discrimination against gay and lesbian citizens has been aggressively reasserted. Few expressed surprise that outright bans against same-sex marriages passed in Arizona and Florida, or that voters in Arkansas approved a law restricting the right to adopt a child to married couples, a status gay and lesbians cannot attain in that state.

But California? California, where the state Supreme Court earlier this year declared it unconstitutional for same-sex couples to be barred from marriage -- this a few months before the Connecticut Supreme Court did likewise? California, where same-sex couples have been tying the knot since June?

Sure, the initiative that reverses the California court ruling passed with "only" 52 percent of the vote, but unless legal challenges halt it, the state constitution is now amended to define marriage as between a man and a woman.

All this has special resonance for my partner and me, "registered domestic partners" in our home state of California when I took up the presidency of Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass. We moved east in 2005 and had no plans to marry. We didn't think it would make a difference to our relationship of -- at the time -- 26 years. We had long since established the terms of our partnership. Our families fully honored and recognized our commitment to one another. Why marry?

Yet after the Massachusetts Legislature took its courageous stand in 2007 and turned back an effort to put a civil right to popular vote, we were inspired to express solidarity with the state that first afforded all residents equal marriage rights. To our surprise, we learned what a difference being married did make. New was the deep comfort and support we felt residing in a state that recognized our relationship as equal in every regard to the relationships of other couples who had publicly declared their commitment to one another.

In April, we had an unwelcome opportunity to experience how the normality of marriage -- the fact that in Massachusetts it's no big deal -- can be a very big deal indeed. My partner was taken to the hospital with a potentially life-threatening condition while I was traveling.

There was much to be concerned about as I flew back to Massachusetts, but one thing was easy. When I called the hospital and inquired about his condition, I identified myself as "Mr. Kollmeier's husband." I was immediately put through to the nurse who gave me the reassurance I needed. This was particularly comforting at a time of crisis.

Of course, we will still have reason to worry if a medical emergency overtakes us while traveling outside one of the few jurisdictions that recognize our marriage. This is not a moment when you want to have to provide domestic partnership documentation, much less negotiate with a skeptical or resistant gatekeeper. During a trip to California last summer, we figured we were safe in this regard. We also felt the same level of comfort and support we had come to take for granted in Massachusetts. And which our many friends in Connecticut now also feel in their home state, as we will when we visit them.

But where are we in, and with, California, after Proposition 8? Can we be regarded as married when we are next in California? We could have married again there, but it honestly didn't occur to us to collect another marriage certificate. The point is to be married in a state that supports our marriage.

Until, that is, we live in a nation that does so from sea to shining sea. On that, I take the long view. It was only in the mid-'60s, after all, that such notorious racist institutions as the poll tax and anti-miscegenation laws were finally cleared away.

The road is long, and as far as equal rights -- for all, whatever our sexual orientation or gender expression -- we are perhaps nearer the beginning than the end.

Ralph Hexter, president of Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., is the first college president to be married to a same-sex partner.