The option of marriage is in some ways a Rorschach test, revealing generational as well as cultural divides. Segments of the community still equate gay liberation with sexual freedom or see marriage as a sexist institution that oppresses women. Others have children, joint mortgages and all the accouterments of mainstream culture.
But few expect such differences to be aired publicly, at least until after the November election.
"With this anti-gay initiative on the ballot, you're seeing the community coming together like never before," said Torie Osborn, an advisor to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and former director of the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.
If the experience of gay-marriage pioneers in the Netherlands and Massachusetts is any guide, those who marry in California will be for the most part longtime couples in their 40s and 50s.
But that is also the group with the most ambivalence about marriage, said M.V. Lee Badgett, research director of the Williams Institute of Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy at UCLA. Badgett estimates that in the first three years, only about half of California's more than 100,000 same-sex couples noted in the 2000 census will marry -- assuming the constitutional amendment doesn't pass.
Surveys have found that the younger they are, the more enthusiastic gay men and lesbians tend to be about marriage. But it's often later in life, when practical and legal considerations concerning having children or buying property come into play, that people take the leap.
In the Netherlands and Massachusetts, people's views on marriage shifted over time, Badgett said. Lesbians, for example, began to think how marriage between two women -- or two men -- could change an institution they considered inequitable.
Perhaps because he runs adult education programs and coming-out groups for the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center, Ruben Romo is comfortable with the idea of taking his time and sorting out his feelings.
Romo, 41, and his partner, Mark Beaty, 40, the center's grants manager, have been together five years, but they took each step slowly. Romo had a rule: He'd move in with someone only after the relationship had lasted a year. Then he found out that Beaty's rule was two years. Three years passed before they finally set up house.
"There's no question in my mind that at some point we'll get married," Romo said. "But we've seen people make that decision without giving it the weight we think it deserves. We see marriage as something we take incredibly seriously."
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mary.engel@latimes.com
