A (gay) friend was talking about the ongoing drama of his parents (decades old) divorce. I said, "I don't get this whole [gay] marriage thing."
"Right," he said.
"I mean, whatever, but I think we need to work on convincing straight people to not get married rather than convincing states to let us get married," I said.
"It'll never happen," he said.
"Right, besides we'd need better Corporate law, and good luck seeing that happen," I said. "I mean what we really need are ways to incorporate sustainable co-operatives without the concepts/burdens for-profit/non-profit entities."
Which is, if you've ever wondered, what its like to live in my head.
When we get down to the heart of the issue, marriage has a lot to do with inheritance, powers of attorney, legal agent-representation stuff (is that different than powers of attorney), relationships and families are orthogonal.
This isn't to say that either the importance of the combined legal entity of a married couple or the legal recognition of a relationship/family isn't a valuable institution, but marriage seems to be a poor implementation of either and both.