Here Be Marriage

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In a few minutes, Rachel and Bob are going to be pronounced husband and wife. These are excellent words, husband and wife—they lean toward each other, they exist in reference to each other, they link arms. “Wife” especially seems druidic and traditional: like “life” but with the addition of the womanly W. “Husband,” despite its traces of Saxon farming methods, makes me think most of “hatband”—and this seems right, if you imagine a conventional movie image of a man in a 1955 hat, with a nice gray hatband. Not a mobster hat, jus the hat of a good man—a husband. Boyfriends don’t wear hats.

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So I am very happy that Bob and Rachel are getting married. Bob will be a good husband, and Rachel a good wife. They are proud of each other, and this mutual pride is one of the nicest things you can sense about a couple.

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"A man should hear his woman’s complaints like warning bells, and then do his best to align his life with his truth and purpose. However, if he believes in the literal content of her complaint, he will immediately go off course, for the content reflects her present mood more than a careful observation of his tendencies over time. Her complaint should be valued as a reminder to ‘get it together,’ and perhaps as an indiciation as to how. But more often than not, the specifics of her complaint do not describe the real, underlying action or tendency that needs to be changed."

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Some benefits derived from marriage can be secured through domestic partnerships, adoptions, insurance policies, and well-written proxies, directives, and wills (how much tuition could be paid for with the legal fees for all that?), but not all of them. The Defense of Marriage Act prevents federal spousal benefits from going to same-sex couples. More than a thousand federal statutes rely on marriage to define one’s status. If you are a widow of any age caring for a child, and your income falls below a certain level, you may qualify for Social Security benefits based on your late spouse’s earnings (beyond what the child might receive). An unmarried parent would not. You don’t need to be married to be a good parent, but marriage equality protects children by giving parents more tools with which to protect them.

Say that the practical issues could all be worked out, and domestic partnerships could be made more or less equitable. Would that do the trick? This was one of the central questions of Perry v. Schwarzenegger: whether being almost married, but not quite, is good enough.

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"And there are things almost harder to imagine, things you don’t want to know about: the many almosts that might have torn them apart. And all that distance, and all those real regrets and separations that only proved what they had was worth holding onto. And then there’s you. The ultimate proof."

"Bateman had known Amanda Anka, daughter of Paul, for ten years before they started dating. “I only wanted to get married once, so when I felt I was ready to handle it, I looked at my relationships and noticed that boyfriends get tired of girlfriends, and vice versa, but you never get tired of your friends.” They married in 2001, and have a daughter, Francesca, who is nearly 4. “It’s really nice to be with your friend every day,” he says, with seemingly no sense of how adorable that is."