Andrew Sullivan responds to the heterosexism of a reader, who wrote, “Heterosexuality is normal and it’s about life. Homosexuality is about sex.”:

99 percent of a gay relationship is about life when sex isn’t happening. It’s about waking up together, getting to know each others’ friends and family, getting into a fight on vacation, or complaining about the weak coffee your boyfriend just made. That’s what I think of when I mention the boyfriend. I wouldn’t dream of talking about our sex life, which is as private as any heterosexual’s. And part of the trap gay people are in is that we don’t even have a vocabulary to describe our lives. Imagine trying to describe your relationship with your wife or husband without being able to ue the terms ‘wife’ or ‘husband.’ Would ‘girlfriend’ do? Or ‘partner’? Or some other either infantilizing or euphemized term? Without the right to marry and the vocabulary of marriage, gay people will be permanently, rhetorically and culturally marginalized, shunted to the side of families into which they are born, uniquely unable to participate in the rituals that bind families together and keep them intact. That’s why marriage is so important an issue.