Beginning at 8 a.m. Tuesday in San Joaquin County’s office of the recorder/county clerk, men will be able to marry men, and women will be able to marry women.

The state Supreme Court’s May 15 ruling takes effect next week, legalizing same-sex marriage and making California the second state to do so. Gay couples have been able to register as domestic partners with the state since 2005, but this landmark ruling gives them full marriage rights.

The U.S. government, we should mention, does not recognize any same-sex marriage under federal law, and most of the states have statutes or constitutions that bar recognition of gay marriage.

That makes California’s high court ruling even more of a socio-cultural milestone, one that’s not so different from the decision 60 years ago that struck down the state’s ban on interracial marriage. Marriage was deemed to be a fundamental right under that ruling, and laws restricting it could not be based solely on racial prejudice. Twenty years later, the U.S. Supreme Court ended all race-based legal restrictions on marriage.

Gay rights wasn’t a public issue until the 1970s or later, but it wasn’t until 2000 that California voters were asked to approve Proposition 22, the Defense of Marriage Act that would limit marriage to couples of the opposite sex.

The Tracy Press editorialized that the 2000 proposition was unnecessary, because California law already only recognized marriages between men and women. We described the proposition as senseless intolerance wrapped in a ballot measure that served only to elevate the moral stature of its proponents. But at the March primary, 61 percent voted in favor of that proposition.

The marriage issue came up again in early 2004, when San Francisco issued marriage licenses to more than 4,000 same-sex couples, but six months later, the Supreme Court ruled that the marriages violated state law.

Then, in 2005 and 2007, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed legislative bills that sought to expand marriage rights to same-sex couples. However, the state’s high court reaffirmed the Legislature’s intent with its 4-3 ruling in May.

And this month, a constitutional amendment was qualified for the Nov. 4 ballot that would overturn the ruling. Now it’s back to the voters.

We agree with Chief Justice Ronald George, who wrote the 121-page majority opinion, stating that the state Constitution’s guarantees of personal privacy and autonomy protect "the right of an individual to establish a legally recognized family with the person of one’s choice."

The Constitution, he said, must be "interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as opposite-sex couples."

To rule otherwise, he said, marks same-sex couples with second-class citizenship.

On Tuesday, when San Joaquin County begins to award marriage licenses to same-sex couples who may be our neighbors, friends and family members, it does so on a nondiscriminatory basis.

Let the wedding bells ring.