The Chicago Tribune is a newspaper with a very strong reputation for conservatism (the farthest left they ever went was endorsing Obama in 2008, which wasn't really left at all). Yesterday (Sunday, June 17) they were running a whole bunch of "week in review" blurbs. The lede for the blurb entitled "More opposition to gay marriage ban" was "The Cook County state's attorney's office acknowledged Thursday that the state's ban on gay marriage violates the Illinois Constitution."
No, it didn't say "claimed that." Nor did it say "asserted that." It said "acknowledged that."
It would have been even better to see "marriage equality" instead of "gay marriage", but one must be grateful for small favors.
"Acknowledged" is a pretty strong term. It implies that the author of the blurb (and by extension the editorial staff of the paper) considers Ms. Alvarez's (we're probably talking about a fairly junior reporter, since he/she didn't refer to her by name, and should have capitalized "State's Attorney"; it's a formal title) legal assertion to be so legitimate that she couldn't realistically take any other position (her photo, the only one included among the blurbs, had a caption that used her full name and properly capitalized her title). It's nice to have considerations like that, well, acknowledged.
The Tribune's conservatism extends mostly to the economic side, not the social side, so this development isn't really surprising. But it's still welcome.
If we want to get our points across to the general public, we need to make sure to use language like that.