Jeff’s comment about this being “European of you” is actually quite accurate. Come to Sweden! We’ve got free healthcare and no stigma on non-marital relationships :)

Thanks for speaking out publicly on this!

I have resulted to saying “I don’t know.” – which ALWAYS throws people off ;)

Wish u guys all the very best.

This simply is not possible (at least not in the US- maybe they are somewhere else) because married couples are treated differently by the government than unmarried couples (even those living together for a long time – the exception is states with common-law marriage, by which you get married by default if you’ve been living together long enough. Still marriage though).

There is a good reason that so many gay couples are fighting for this legal benefit. It’s not just to make them feel good – there are serious legal and financial implications involved with getting married that are easy to take for granted if they’re readily available to you. Sure, it’s just a piece of paper…until you want to put your partner on your health insurance and find that you cannot. Or until your partner become incapacitated and you are not the person allowed to make medical decisions for him because you have no legal relationship to him whatsoever. In fact, in a critical care situation, you may not be allowed into the room at all. Or until you want to adopt a baby and are flat out rejected because you aren’t married. Unfortunately, these things happen all the time.

Anyway, I don’t mean to be critical or negative, but it’s hard not to get frustrated when I see straight people so blithely dismiss marriage and take those benefits for granted while gay people are fighting so hard just to be allowed to do the same thing.

Marriage is what you make of it. The past is the past, and there’s no reason you have to follow the traditions of the past. Just as so many negative words and other things have been reclaimed in a positive light for a new generation, why not make modern marriage into an institution that you can be proud of?

Logically I know it makes no sense, but if you find that right person ritualized commitment is incredibly (for want of a better word) romantic on a primordial level. So I say elope or go to city hall on the sly.

But wear an owl suit and post the pictures for us all afterward.