If we really stuck to the definition, "marriage" as a legal status would make no sense and should have no impact on how the gov. is treating you (fundamentally,

If we really stuck to the definition, "marriage" as a legal status would make no sense and should have no impact on how the gov. is treating you (fundamentally, why should the gov. care about who your heart belongs to?) So discussions are bound to be about the perks that have nothing to do with marriage per se, but are bundled with the marriage status, and are harder or impossible to get outside of it. Opening marriage to more people is a more reasonable proposition than rewriting every single marriage perk to be more open to everyone.