marriage update

We've been married all of 8 months, but we seem to be bearing up well. Marriage has all sorts of legal consequences we didn't really bother to research. There's a fashion these days for couples to discuss the prospect of marriage in-depth for months and years, and decide together when it's a good time. I find this almost literally abhorrent, and I think this more than anything else ultimately marks me as a romantic. There's a place for marriage as a tool to manipulate finances or immigration status--I know one couple who accelerated by years their marriage plans for the latter reason--but that's not really us. We didn't do the reading or the math. We just wanted to be married for no discernible reason other than an absurdly unlikely enjoyment of each other's presence.

Of course I support marriage equality for gay couples, because there every reason to do so and no reason not to beyond a mistaken belief that marriage has always and everywhere, or even in our own cultural history, been between one man and one woman; and the equally mistaken belief that homosexuality is a choice, or is somehow harmful.

(I recommend reading at least the Wikipedia article on the California Proposition 8 case. The decision itself is also good reading, especially as court decisions go.)

However, nothing quite drives home the ubiquitous civil power of marriage like this:

I rented a car, and Anna was automatically allowed as a driver. Because we're married.

I can't imagine what else is waiting for us, certainly not between us as a couple, but especially in how the everyday world treats us. No wonder you can't construct a new institution that's equal to marriage: how many thousands of these little things like rental car rights are granted just because two people happen to have the right license on file together at the county offices? The federal government alone can think of 1,138.

Does that include the car insurance?