One reason has been our community's failure in the past to recognize relationships in our midst. For example, most of the gay press traditionally cast a largely blind eye to its coupled readership, despite the weight of survey data showing that more than 60 percent of the gay and lesbian community is in a relationship. The resulting invisibility of couples in our media led to perilous presumptions. We were lucky to see the occasional article on joint financing or partner abuse, and because we thought of ourselves as a community of individuals, we long-ignored the basic civil right of marriage. Another reason for the failure to recognize relationships rests with couples themselves.
Couples are a largely invisible segment of an already mostly underground community.
And some same-sex couples take pains to maintain their own closets, primarily as protection from real or imaginary loss of jobs, housing, child custody or to preserve blood familial ties. Maintaining the closet can be very unhealthy for relationships, sometimes even destroying them. For these couples, a marriage license could seen as a threat as it would shatter the safety of the closet, in part because it would be on public record. When Texas State Representative Glen Maxey proposed legal marriage in 1993, his office was flooded with protests, some from members of the gay community. When Ben and Marcial Cable-McCarthy sued California for marriage in that same year, they received the most vocal support from straight people, and the most vocal antagonism from the gay community.