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Many homosexual couples should be able to register their relationships as domestic partnerships. Their love is as real as that of a heterosexual couple and no one questions their ability to marry regardless of their race or class. Homosexual couples have spent the last ten, twenty or fifty years with that person – and want to honor their relationship in the greatest way our society has to offer, by making a public commitment to stand together in good times and bad, through all the joys and challenges family life brings. Many others want the right to marry because they are parents and know that marriage offers children a vital safety net, guaranteeing them protections that unmarried parents never could. Still, other people – both gay and straight – are fighting for the right of same-sex couples to marry because they recognize that it is simply not fair to deny some families the protections all other families are eligible to receive. Currently in the United States, same-sex couples in long-term, committed relationships pay higher taxes and are denied basic protections and rights granted to married couples. Among them: Hospital visitation. Married couples have the automatic right to visit each other in the hospital and mak