What will happen (what I've called for anyway) is to change the approach of Gays and Lesbians. Forget aiming merely for marriage. Aim instead to create a convenant (with a different name) that is 'higher' than marriage - harder to enter into and harder to break out of. (Example: upon 'divorce' all mutually owned funds are given to charity rather than divided amount the participants).Using your given example, what exactly are the benefits to this "higher" institution? And how would it benefit me, and why would I choose it? Speaking as a divorced person, being required to forfeit all of my "mutually owned funds" (including the house which I now solely inhabit) upon divorce doesn't sound palatable.
Give it 5 years. With divorce rates as they are, anyone who wants to prove that they are 'committed' to each other will slowly drift to this new convenant: homosexual or hetrosexual.I'm sorry, but I don't necessarily see that.
I have a friend who has been with the same woman for 25 years. They've been married for 19. 3 kids together. And she's just revealed that it's been a "marriage of convenience" for her. Oh, and that it's no longer convenient. So he should be forced to give away everything he's worked for over the last quarter-century? How will that help his kids, and keep them off the streets of South-Side Chicago?