Well, since my partner and I are gay men and we live in the socially progressive mecca known as Texas, we cannot legally marry. We've created a number of documents and contracts to establish some of the rights of inheritance and medical decision-making that a straight couple could establish with a quick trip to the JP. We own a home together, and I'm largely supporting us while he attends medical school. We are very much a family, and our respective immediate families treat us as such. If they did not, I would not often seek their company, and that applies to my parents and sister as much as it does to his.

If we had the choice, we'd be married in a legal sense, but if I were a betting man I'd bet a mortgage payment that Texas will be in the last 5 states to approve THAT sort of thing. However, we would do the official marriage bit more for the legal status than for any suggestion of extra commitment, since we've been together for 9 years of our own volition. You're welcome to your personal definition, as exclusive and inconsiderate of non-traditional families though it may be, but I'm as entitled to my own, and my family includes my partner's parents and siblings as much as it does my own.