We've been together for a while now and it's getting serious. And we're both at the age now where we see everyone around us getting married, and we kind of think that we ought to be getting married as well.
This is why we won't.
In many ways the story of my partner and I is the stereotypical activist-meets-activist tale. We were discussing gender issues online before we ever met. On our first date we had an impassioned discussion of genital mutilation as a function of culture. We quickly learned that we were both psychology graduate students with interest in making a career out of mental health public policy work. We argued about policy, we argued about gender politics, we argued about the presidential election, we argued about religion-- we argued about just about everything there is to argue about. We charted the progress of equal marriage legislation across the country, cheerled and volunterred with equal rights organizations, and somewhere along the line we became crazy about each other.
As I said above, we're at that age where everyone around us seems to be pairing off, having children (!) and just generally settling down. Sooner or later we were going to have to decide what we were going to do moving forward.
At this point I guess I should point out that we live in North Carolina, a state which (though it went blue for Obama) is about as conservative as it gets on social issues. Same-sex marriage isn't even on the legislative radar here, and there's no way it would pass as a referendum. Too much hate, here. But we could still get married-- because, you see, I'm a man and my partner is a woman. But we won't do that.
We decided that as long as our gay brothers and sisters cannot be married, neither can we. We decided that we were not entitled to a right withheld from other people because of who they love. We decided to join the ranks of the "life partners," the "special friends," and the "long-time companions." And we want to say this to the people we're joining--
We're sorry. We don't believe it's right that this is being kept from you. So we're staying out of it with you. And like you, we'll be watching, and fighting, and waiting, and hoping.