Mrs. King described herself as “an outspoken supporter of civil and human rights for gay and lesbian people” and frequently made parallels between the civil rights struggle of the 1960s and the challenges confronting gays and lesbians today. She fought for laws banning discrimination against gays, and against efforts to amend the Constitution to ban sam-sex marriage. “Like Martin,” she said, “I don’t believe you can stand for freedom for one group of people and deny it to others.”

But you wouldn’t have known it from the obituaries that ran this week. Most newspapers either ignored the issue completely or touched on it only in passing, with a generic sentence mentioning only “equal rights” and avoiding the contentious issue of same-sex marriage (the Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Chronicle were two exceptions). Although Andrew Young described her gay rights work in an interview on CNN, no other television network – either cable or broadcast – included even a single mention of the issue in all their coverage of Mrs. King’s passing.

This is not to say that the fate of gays and lesbians was at the center of Coretta Scott King’s life, or that tributes to her should have focused primarily on this issue. But given her history – and the fact that she was a strong moral voice for equality for gays and lesbians years before many other progressives stepped up to the plate – one would have thought that tributes to her life and work would have included at least a passing mention.

So why was this piece of Mrs. King’s history omitted? It may be in part because in 2006 we want to believe that the fight for civil rights is in the past, an issue that has moved from the realm of contest to the realm of consensus. After all, even the most conservative politicians in the land now offer tributes to Coretta Scott King and her husband. If Congress voted today on whether to declare Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday a national holiday, you can bet the measure would pass unanimously, with no one stepping up to oppose it, as 90 House members and 22 senators did in 1983 (including then-Wyoming Congressman Dick Cheney).

But discussing Coretta Scott King’s advocacy for gays and lesbians – and especially her support of same-sex marriage - pulls this national icon back into the realm of bitter political debate, casting her not just as a model of courage, struggle and moral righteousness but as a participant in one of our most divisive controversies. Suddenly the civil rights struggle doesn’t seem like a chapter in our children’s history books – a fight that is over, and one in which we all agree who was right and who was wrong. Instead, it becomes a fight whose echoes continue today in matters to which all of us do not pay the same lip service.

Many African-Americans - including many religious leaders, and even some of Coretta Scott King’s own children - disagreed strongly with her on the issue of gay rights. Some bristle at the notion that the effort to secure full legal and civil rights for gay Americans is only the latest incarnation of the struggle for equality that came to a head in the 1960s. We could – and perhaps we should – have an extended discussion about the similarities and differences between the two, and where equality begins and ends. But it is not too hard to imagine that a few decades from now, this conflict too will evolve into consensus on which side was right and which side was wrong. If and when that happens, it will be in no small part because those with moral authority, like Coretta Scott King, took a strong stance knowing that it would not be popular in all quarters.

Although we have Mrs. King’s assurances on the subject, we cannot know with absolute certainty whether Martin Luther King, Jr. would have supported same-sex marriage or other efforts at equality for gays and lesbians were he alive today. But there is no doubt where Coretta Scott King stood on the issue. That is a part of her legacy, and one that should not be ignored.