Performing Commitment-Katrina

Performing Commitment takes us through how author Jacqueline Taylor and her partner have gone about creating and maintaining their identity as a couple and family. In the next couple of paragraphs I've pulled out comments that I found interesting.
Taylor remarks in the later part of her essay that her partner and her must "create family outside the context of social and legal structures that allow traditional families to take themselves for granted." I've never considered my family a family because my parents signed a certain piece of paper 20 some years ago. It is not the fact that my parents can be on the same insurance plan or inherit estates without wills that define us as a family. It is the love and support that exists between us. I found her comment interesting in that I think "family" is for everyone created beyond a legal context. It's not ceremony or document that creates a relationship. Perhaps it's because I've grown up in an environment where the definition of family is not limited by any legal fulfillment or blood connections. From observation, it seems with younger generations, including our own, close friends are for most purposes family.
Taylor describes how "characterized by daily, and yes, more mundane performances of commitment than by rituals and ceremonies." Whether this comment was meant in comparison to heterosexual relationships, I don't know. However, I'd argue that this is the case with any relationships. I would also make the observation that on the whole society is less concerned with legal ceremonies and documentation. American society seems to be more accepting as of late in people "doing their own thing." Some couples are choosing to skip a wedding all together while being in committed monogamous, living together, and raising kids. I can point to Grey's Anatomy Meredith and Derrek who rather than signing a marriage proposal decide on a post-it note. Yet the two considered themselves married.
In conclusion while gays and lesbians are limited in rights to marriage, I find that what goes into creating and negotiating family identity has more similarities than differences to heterosexuals relationships.

1. What have you noticed about society's view on marriage in recent years? How has it evolved, changed, or remained consistent?

2. How would you describe your family's identity and its development?