A U.S. district court judge in Utah has ruled that the state's ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional. His ruling makes the beehive state, at least for now, the eighteenth state in which LGBT couples may legally marry.

In his opinion, the judge, Robert J. Shelby, wrote "Utah's prohibition on same-sex marriage conflicts with the United States Constitution's guarantees of equal protection and due process under the law. The State's current laws deny its gay and lesbian citizens their fundamental right to marry and, in so doing, demean the dignity of these same-sex couples for no rational reason. Accordingly, the court finds that these laws are unconstitutional."

The opinion is unlikely to be popular in the deeply conservative state. The prominence of Mormonism in Utah and the LDS church's vocal opposition to same-sex marriage will only make the ruling more controversial.

The ruling overturns an amendment that Utah voters added to their state constitution in 2004. At the time, fully 66 percent of Utah voters approved the ban.

The ruling has, at least temporarily, paved the way for what CNN describes as a "same-sex marriage frenzy," in which joyous couples are rushing to courthouses to get their marriage certificates.

Of course, part of the reason for that rush is the less-than-joyous fact that the state plans to appeal Judge Shelby's ruling. Governor Gary Herbert has already promised to fight the decision and tried to cast Shelby as an "activist" outsider imposing his views on the unwilling citizens of Utah.

This ruling comes just days after another Utah judge rolled back part of the state's anti-polygamy law. At the time, conservatives in the state wrung their hands over the decision, claiming it opened the way for further erosion of so-called traditional marriage and seizing the opportunity attack gay marriage in the same breath. Though the two rulings have nothing to do with each other, Governor Herbert's reaction to both was remarkably similar. We can likely expect similar rhetorical conflation of the issues as both cases work their way through the appeals process.

That said, it's worth noting the coincidence of two separate and radically different marriage-related rulings in the span of a week. Utah, one of the most conservative states in the U.S., finds itself unable to clearly define the terms of marriage and family. It sits in a state of uncertainty whose consequences have yet to be fully worked out.