Assimilation

So the New York Times has an article on Gay Marriage, this weekend just gone, that reads like a love-in on the virtues of assimilation, by intelligent folk that should know better, to whit; Jonathan Rauch (author of: "Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America") and David Blankenhorn (author of: "The future of marriage"). There is also this article / interview with Rauch on NPR about how gay marriage is causing a shift in gay culture; ie from "outsider" to "insider", from despised freaks to "seat-at-the-table".
Both authors and both books treat marriage itself as the most important element of the alleged "marriage debate", and neither really engage with the serious alternate stratagems to couple-dowm (like empowered singledom, for a start). The arguments are essentially American (ie the need for marriage to ensure self-less devotion of one partner to another in a society without ready accessto state funded social services, aged care or health), but in the wake of the Howard era and the Christian right's wholesale importation of American "Family Values" crusading to Australia, not so alien to debates here about civil unions.
But it would appear as though arguments about what and how to do relationships have been wholly hijacked in the mainstream press by people who can't think beyond big frou-frou frocks and those diamond rings. The NPR interview does give some counter views from radical Queers (like there was any other kind...) but doesn't delve into alternate forms of relationships or living outside of relationship structures or even why it's so important to have state sanctioned relationship recognition at all (and i'm sure someone would say, "But what about the children?")
Very boring.