Growing up in the San Francisco Bay area in the 1970’s, I became keenly aware of the emerging protest, “Marriage is just a piece of paper!” That protest was not just a fleeting trend. In a 2010 Time magazine article, “Who Needs Marriage: A Changing Institution” (Nov 18, 2010), Belinda Luscombe states, “When an institution so central to human experience suddenly changes shape in the space of a generation or two, it’s worth trying to figure out why.” According to a Pew Research Center poll in 2010, “What we found is that marriage, whatever its social, spiritual or symbolic appeal, is in purely practical terms just not as necessary as it used to be. Neither men or women need to be married to have sex or companionship or professional success or respect or even children.” Results of the 2012 US Census, reveal that 2/3 of couples married in 2012 shared a home together for more than two years before getting married. And no wonder, if our previous understanding of marriage was reduced to no more than a way to get what we viewed as necessary.