Last year I wrote a column about my friends Ron and Chuck. Ron and Chuck are about to celebrate their 20th year as a couple. If they had a choice, Ron and Chuck would be married.

Some Texans don’t want Ron and Chuck even to be able to make decisions about each other’s healthcare – much less be married.

For all intents and purposes they are married. In fact, they are more married than many straight couples with a marriage license. I say that because there are so many things that are normal about their relationship – things that many modern couples no longer find time to do.

How many on-the-go couples eat dinner together almost every night? How many couples even make it to 20 years? Or 10 years? Statistics suggest that a majority of married couples will divorce before celebrating their 10th anniversary. Some people want you to believe that gay marriage will cause straight marriage to collapse. Honestly, heterosexuals have done a pretty good job of doing that themselves.

Every night after eating dinner, Ron and Chuck watch the television shows that Chuck Tivoed. (Ron can’t operate it.) On Saturdays, they do errands then clean the house together. In fact, most things they do together – including grocery shopping.There is – just like in straight marriage – a division of labor: Ron cooks, and Chuck washes the dishes. Chuck washes the cars and clothes, and Ron cooks. Ron likes to cook almost as much as Chuck likes to eat.

Like most couples, they decorate the house on holidays – especially Christmas. They go out to eat on Valentine’s Day, their birthdays and their anniversary.

They walk their dog Simba in the evenings. They sit on their patio when the weather allows. Ron loves cocktail parties. Chuck grins and bears them.

Ron and Chuck met when Chuck was a student at SMU. Ron had graduated from the University of Oklahoma and had moved to Dallas to seek his fortune. Twenty years later, they both have successful careers and live in stylish Uptown.

Chuck works in North Dallas. Ron designs restaurants. Chances are many of you have eaten in at least one of the restaurants he designed – Taverna, Toulouse, Aurora – or in his own restaurant, Cafe San Miguel.

Chuck’s job provides him with health insurance. Ron, being self-employed, has to pay for his own insurance – which costs him thousands of dollars a year. If Ron and Chuck were married, Ron would qualify for coverage on Chuck’s insurance. If the proposed constitutional amendment passes, Chuck’s company wouldn’t even be allowed to offer something as harmless as partner benefits.

In fact, one study suggests there are literally thousands of benefits that Ron and Chuck would enjoy if they were married, from health insurance to filing a joint income tax return.

As it is, they both have to file single with no exemptions; Simba doesn’t count. They would also be able to make lifesaving and life-ending decisions for each other. In death (and they will be together until death) they would be able to pass to each other those things – money, property, mementos – that husbands and wives all have and take for granted.

Without the benefit of marriage, gay couples must spend thousands of dollars drafting legal documents to secure the rights that some Texans want to deny them.

As written, Proposition 2 will invalidate anything that is “identical or similar to marriage.”

For what? Because Ron and Chuck’s 20-year relationship makes a few people uncomfortable?

Don and Perry – also friends of mine – have been together for more than 20 years. They argue about the actual number of years because they don’t agree on when their anniversary is. One counts from the day they met. The other counts from the day they first went out.

If possible, they are even more normal – boring, actually – than Ron and Chuck. Don is an accountant. Perry is a manager at a high-end retail store. They own a home in North Dallas. Don drives a Jeep. Perry drives a Volvo. They have a dog. Don mows, trims and edges the lawn. Perry cooks. If I didn’t tell you that Perry was a man, you would think that they were the straight couple next door.

Perry’s nephew, Patrick, and sister-in-law, Kris, are New Orleans evacuees. They were trapped in Memorial Hospital then the airport until they were flown out in an Air Force cargo plane five days after the hurricane struck.

When they arrived in San Antonio, Don and Perry drove to meet them. After a bath and a good night sleep in a hotel, Kris and Patrick returned to Dallas with Don and Perry, who opened their home for seven weeks until Perry’s sister-in-law was able to find a job and an apartment.

I’ll let you decide if Don and Perry are heroes – or just a family. Actually, a family is all they want to be.

No matter where you come down on the side of gay marriage, Proposition 2 is wrong.

I could argue that the entire premise is unnecessary. I could argue that gay marriage is not a threat to heterosexual marriage. I could argue that what some people disingenuously refer to as “traditional” marriage is little more than an attempt to impose their religious views on others. I could even argue that allowing the religious Right the ability to legislate marriage could lead to an attempt to legislate – outlaw – divorce, reproductive rights and other privacy rights that all of you take for granted.

Or, I could simply point out that gay marriage is already illegal in Texas, which makes this amendment superfluous. More than superfluous, it is malicious and mean-spirited.

Please vote NO on Proposition 2 on Nov. 8 – if not for Ron, Chuck, Don or Perry, then for the many gay friends you have but just may not know about yet.

George Henson is a lecturer of Spanish. He may be contacted at [email protected].