text: OK, but it's complicated, and (1) the official recognition by the church that our marriages can be true sacramental unions, and (2) the statement a church wedding would make to all Catholics of all kinds, that marriages between same-sex partners are as valid and as holy as those between opposite-sex partners, would mean a great deal.
  
  My husband and I were civil-unionized in Vermont in 2000, and married by the province of Québec in 2005; and while we don't actually require a church wedding, nevertheless we consider our marriage a sacramental one, and take seriously the church's traditional aspirations for the relationship between married partners.
  
  Meanwhile, with regard to the many gay Catholics who have consulted their conscience and decided to leave the church, I understand their decision. Not only that, but I understand their expressions of bitterness toward many in the hierarchy, though conservative Catholics tend to be put off by it. To those Catholics: Tough.