The strength of your writing is your ability to slough off layers of cultural trappings, and lay bare the core of the topic you’re addressing. In this case, you’ve illuminated not only the tangible feeling of elation that presides over gay weddings, but also, the albatross of custom, expectation and responsibility that sullies too many straight weddings. You’ve also suggested another interesting, albeit sad, point: the true mark of a right being fully integrated into society is having it be taken for granted.

I hope the situation you describe, (i.e. the ubiquity of gay marriage leading to it being draped in the same weighty paradigms as straight marriages,) is slow to come. However, if that is the price we must pay to assure that the constitution’s right to pursue happiness is granted to everyone unilaterally, then so be it.

Your piece makes me wish I was a CA resident so I could vote my conscience on Prop 8.