Freddie DeBoer makes a good point:
...[marriage equality skeptics] believe that there is a difference between a union between two people of the same sex, and two people of different sexes. I can only say that, of course, there are some differences in those unions, some obvious, some not, but that those differences don’t need to be recognized by government in a way that changes our nomenclature for permanent romantic pairing.
Are people really saying that a lesbian couple of several decades or a newly married couple like me and Aaron fall outside the cultural range of these experiences? Civil marriage is already so broad in its inclusion of social types and practices that including gay couples will make virtually no difference at all. And this is the genius of civil marriage: it's a unifying, not balkanizing, civic institution. To argue that including gay couples destroys the institution is absurd.
And that is why the exclusion of gay people is not about securing marriage; it is about stigmatizing homosexuals, keeping a bright line between them and their own families and forcing them into a position of social exclusion that damages them and all of us. It is about prejudice and fear. And we will overcome both with time and patience and integrity.