A good lawyer may be able to come up with an instrument that is akin to marriage: in financial and legal sense. Two people can have powers of attorney to each other, will their belongings at death, and sign living wills to give each other the power to handle their health like a spouse. With those, an utilitarian will no longer care if he or she is married. Those esoteric rights not covered, such as the immunity on court testification, would not matter to day-to-day lives. Certainly, any two people may call each other spouses, live together, and do whatever they wish with mutual consent. So, what’s the big deal that same-sex people can now legally marry in California? Why would anyone care?
Practicality has little to do with this. Symbolic meaning is the key in this issue. The word marriage carries such emotional power that people defend and fight for it like a sacred relic. Of course, the ferocity of the defense is always matched with the intensity of the offense. Traditionalists screamed, “You people shall not cheapen it.” Cheapen? An insult! Wars ensue.
I remember vividly the moment I was pronounced married. A weight of commitment thumped on my heart and a wave of joy swept through me too. This is it! My life partner on my side. 25 years and 2 daughters later, I drank in all the sweet and bitterness, joy and heart-ache of a marriage. It is hard work and i would not know if I can stick through it without being married. The word is magic and the ritual transcends a relationship to a undescribable level. I do not want people, like Britney Spear or Dennis Rodman, to cheapen it. Same-sex couples have proven that they can commit, probably not less than what I have, to their life-partners. They seem to have understood and would treasure and guard this ritual as vigorously. I have no problem for them to join me as married people.
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