One West Hollywood professional said that even though he has been with his partner for seven years, and they're shopping for a house together, "there's a little ambivalence about marriage."
"It all came up so suddenly," said the man, who asked not to be identified because he is reluctant to have intimate details of his personal life "popping up on Google."
"Straight people enter into dating and courtship with marriage always out there as a possibility throughout the relationship," he said. "It wasn't even a possibility for us, and then all of a sudden there's this looming question: Do we want to get married? It's this whole new commitment I hadn't really thought about."
For gay couples, he said, the decision carries pressure to act quickly, since marriage will no longer be an option if a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage passes in November.
"I think this whole marriage thing is causing more anxiety and fights among gay couples than anything has before," he said.
Ken Howard, a psychotherapist who works with gay men in West Hollywood, said that for some gay couples marriage raises significant financial issues.
Although marriage brings benefits that can be a boon, especially for low-income couples, it also brings shared responsibilities and debts.
Some financial advisors, for example, counsel gay couples not to register as domestic partners if one or both partners have HIV and could leave the other on the hook for potentially catastrophic medical bills.
"For legal and financial reasons, a couple may not want to be legally tied," Howard said.
Of course, there's always the prenuptial agreement.
Some gay couples already sign such agreements when they register as domestic partners, said Steven Stolar, a family attorney in Beverly Hills. But in the excitement and emotion surrounding the recent court ruling, not all couples may think about such practical matters.
"All of a sudden, half of their earnings will be their partners' earnings," Stolar said. "And if they want to leave each other, it's not as easy as just packing a bag and moving out."
For some, marriage may not be politically palatable. Just as heterosexuals in the 1960s and '70s began to challenge marriage as an institution, some gay people resist adopting the mainstream model of marriage and children.
