Marriage. Some might cringe at the word. Some might swoon. It has always been a sacred and serious legal binding that half of Americans take lightly. While some people are saying their vows and nervously adjusting their white gowns, other people are not legally aloud to marry the one they love.

  With the landscape of marriage changing dramatically, many people, young and old, are finding work-arounds to the traditional “sign here, here and here” approach to domestic bliss.Many young heterosexual couples are finding that they would prefer to live together, to start a life together, before marriage– not only as a way to “test drive” the relationship, but as a way to get their finances and career in order before legally binding another person to them. Some heterosexual couples are taking a stand and not marrying until gay couples can marry.

  Another set of couples that are experiencing domestic bliss without the legal binding are homosexual couples. In Florida, gay marriage is not legal, so many couples are moving in, saying vows, and trying to start a life that the government tells them they aren’t entitled to have (despite the “all men are created equal” part of our constitution…).

  For a lot of people, living “in sin” as my grandmother would say, is perfectly fine, and they feel just as happy as a married couple. Until a medical emergency or crisis happens. Then, the issue seems much greater.

  This was the reasoning behind the “Domestic Registry” which was brought before Hillsborough County Commissioners on January 24, 2013, during a regularly scheduled council meeting. The registry would allow unmarried couples to make basic legal decisions for the other in the even of an emergency– including both gay and straight couples. This registry is already in place for the city of Tampa, but does not include Hillsborough County. The registry was voted down 4-3, the reasons included everything from personal beliefs of the commissioners to “not wanting to expand government.”

  This registry was in no way a form or document certifying marriage, it is simply a document that if your partner is, for example, unconscious in the hospital, or bleeding out of their eyeballs, you could give the go ahead to the doctors and discuss their treatment and care. This document would not entitle you to be on the other person’s health insurance, just to make a basic decision in an emergency.

  For many people, this is not something they will ever have to experience, but there is more to consider here than simply not being able to sign for your boyfriend’s morphine drip. Consider, for example, a young couple, gay or straight is irrelevant. Lets say that one of the two in the couple is estranged from their family, they haven’t spoken with their parents or next of kin in years, and on their way home from work, they are in a car accident rendering one of them near death. The injured party is at the will of the doctors, the other half of the couple completely helpless as he watches the one he loves suffer in silence. In some cases, the family steps up, but shuts the partner out of all decisions. This is not something anyone would want to go through.

  In a perfect world, we would rarely need this type of registry. We would all be able to marry or not marry or do what we need to do and be equal, and nobody would ever have a crisis. But this is not a perfect world, and as counties surrounding Hillsborough adopt this registry, like the diamond in a ring, the pressure and heat are certainly on.