It is easy to enter legal marriage. Marriage has no substantial qualifications. There is no test of competence as partner or parent, no requirement that there be sex, no penalty for failing to have children, no proof that love be present. Marrying persons must be of opposite sexes, able to complete the applications, take required blood tests, competent to make a contract, and not too closely related by blood. Criminals, prisoners, child molesters, serial batterers, the infertile, and asexual are able to get legally married.
Marriage is the ticket of admission to true adulthood.
There are many responsibilities and protections of law in marriage. Their kinship is determined solely by blood, whether relatives are supportive and loving or hostile and punitive. Freedom to marry is a huge part of the pursuit of happiness. It is wrong to deprive people of this fundamental American value based solely on their sex. Employee benefits, anti-discrimination policies, abolition of sodomy laws, and other equality issues should be easier to achieve once gay men and lesbians are acknowledged as real persons, grownups with rights, responsibilities, and real life issues.