A few nights ago, I watched the HBO documentary The Case Against 8, about the legal proceedings that led to the defeat of Proposition 8, the same-sex marriage ban in California. It’s a powerful movie, not least because of the emotional testimony provided by the plaintiffs in the case, who drive home their deeply personal reasons for seeking to wed:

“I love him more than I love myself,” says Paul Katani of his partner, Jeffrey Zarillo. “I put his needs ahead of my own…. I would like nothing more than to marry him.” How any gay marriage opponent can watch this documentary and not be affected is beyond me.

But what struck me about the case is that it isn’t, really, a debate about same-sex marriage. Ultimately, it’s a debate about relationship choice — and whether individual Americans have the right to create the marriage and family structures that work best for them.

I’m skeptical about categorizing marriage as either “gay” or “straight” — it creates the illusion that there are only two types of socially-sanctioned marriage, when both of these labels can themselves be applied to a vast spectrum of relationship models.

Marriages can vary, not just by gender, but by age, living arrangements, sexual exclusivity, financial practices, and power dynamics. Some of us might find the notion of a husband and wife who don’t share their finances — or, in some cases, a bed — to be absurd. And yet these are all perfectly legal ways to structure a marriage.

Because my parents were close in age — as were both sets of grandparents, and other couples in my extended family — the idea of an age gap in marriage was an anomaly to me. Why would you want to marry someone much older or younger than you?

But an age gap is a non-issue among traditional marriage advocates, and in fact has been a staple of heterosexual marriage for centuries — from President Cleveland (who, at 49, married a 21-year-old) to Woody Allen and Soon-Yi Previn (ages 62 and 27, respectively). While these marriages may strike some of us as distasteful, no one is seriously advocating a legal limit on age gaps between adult couples.

When enshrining an issue like marriage into law — in seeking to preserve its benefits for a certain segment of the population — we leave open the possibility that other people may interpret or experience the matter in a way different than we do.

Thus, “straight marriage” can be interpreted as widely as those heterosexual couples who seek it out: from truly egalitarian marriages, to open relationships, to BDSM arrangements in which one partner or the other plays the dominant role. What do these marriages have in common, really, except that those involved happen to be heterosexual?

We can say that some types of marriages are outliers or aberrations — not “the norm” — but the truth is that marriage has always been a diverse institution. And provided that all parties are of legal age and consent to the arrangement, what right does the state have to object?

Take polygamy, for example. While I’m no fan of Mormonism, and the idea of polygamy as practiced on shows like Sister Wives strikes my liberal sensibilities as inherently sexist, a close reading of court cases on the subject reveals some problematic arguments.

Until December 2013, Utah’s bigamy law “criminalized a married person from ‘cohabit[ing] with another person’”. Essentially, living with more than one partner and calling them both wives — even without seeking a second marriage license — was illegal.

The law was struck down on privacy grounds — with a reference to Lawrence vs. Texas —though polygamous families are still shut out from seeking legal protections. In the case of Kody Brown and his “sister wives”, only one can file taxes with him jointly, while the rest are legally recognized as single persons. Is that the best our legal system can do?

I’m sympathetic to concerns that polygamous arrangements are patriarchal — why does he get to have multiple partners and his wives don’t? — but to suggest that these problems are unique to polygamy is unreasonable.

Let’s be honest: traditional Christian marriage — of the “wife shall obey the husband” variety — is as sexist as any Mormon polygamous arrangement. Even secular culture — from Disney princesses to Twilight love triangles — reinforces patriarchal norms.

The solution is not to ban certain types of marriages, but to educate people — both men and women — about the varieties of marriage that are available to them. We can prosecute those cases that truly infringe upon people’s rights — such as polygamous cult compounds — while allowing others to freely choose the relationships that fit them best.

A prior legal case in Utah found that the state was justified in banning plural marriages “based on its ‘commitment to a system of domestic relations based exclusively upon the practice of monogamy’ which is ‘inextricably woven into the fabric of our society’”.

This sounds a lot like the rhetoric used in the Prop 8 debate — a case of the state privileging one of type of marriage over another. Even if polygamy were proven to be detrimental to society, is the best way to address the issue to criminalize it? A century of prohibition hasn’t stopped people from seeking out these arrangements, as Sister Wives clearly demonstrates.

Families don’t become “stable” because the law forces them into particular boxes. They become stable when the law recognizes and adapts to the relationship models that work for them. A person growing up with a particular romantic orientation — who can see that the family structure they gravitate toward is possible for them — can spend their life working toward that goal, rather than settling for a less authentic expression of it.

As Kristin Perry, one of the plaintiffs in The Case Against 8, puts it, “There’s something humiliating about wanting to be able to make that decision [to marry] and not being able to do so. Kids growing up… like I did would live their lives on a higher arc, it would improve their entire life knowing they could marry.…”

Her wife, Sandra, says, “I want my grandchildren to live in a world where if they grow up and fall in love, they can marry whoever they want…. Having those legal protections is everything.”

Seeking out a non-traditional marriage isn’t selfish or egotistical. It isn’t about putting one’s own needs ahead of one’s family or children.

It’s about creating the family structure that best aligns with a person’s romantic orientation: a marriage that they can dive into wholeheartedly, without reservation, that enables them to be their deepest, most authentic self —and to live their lives on that higher arc.

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If you like this take on marriage, consider checking out one of my e-books, The Rational Hippie, or Sexual Disorientation: A Heteroflexible Search for Love and Connection.