I do honestly get what Bayard is trying to say - that having a peice of paper giving your relationship offical government recognition won't make your lives as a couple any happier or richer or closer on a personal level. And he's right about that. After all, getting married certainly doesn't help heterosexual copies in the longevity race, which up to 50% of couples divorcing at some point (and a somewhat higher rate of divorce for second marriages). Some of the happiest couples that I know who have been together for decades did so without getting officially married. You certainly don't need the government's say-so to spend your life with the person that you love and building a happy and complete existance with one another.

Having said that, there is a very real and very concrete value to having that peice of paper. The government has numerous laws enacted to provide special protections for lawfully married couples that range from automatic inheritance rights, to protection against having a spouse testify against you in court, to filing taxes and claiming benefits, to legal protection if the relationship falls apart. These protections are automatically granted to any heterosexual couple the instant that they marry. One can certainly argue that the government shouldn't be in the business of providing special benefits to some relationships and not others based on filling out a few forms, but it does and these protections can be invaluable when the worst happens.

I know of many gay couples that have spent thousands of dollars filing legal documents to get every protection they possibly can manage under the law. They designate one another as power of attorney and medical proxies. They try to make sure that the other can inherit and shared property without a major tax penalty. They file for civil partnerships (if available in the states that they live), yet all of this effort provides only a very pale immitation of the protections that a marriage license automatically provides.

I could never understand why a coupld of drunk heterosexuals can have a quicky marriage in Vegas, divorce a few month later and during the time they were together have all the protections while my mother's former employer who has been with his partner for twenty years cannot legally call him his husband. It flys in the face of basic fairness, and while Bayard may have decided it might not be worth trying to fight for, I believe that it most certainly is.