The 112 same-sex couples who were married in Downtown Brooklyn on Sunday, July 24th—the first day of gay marriage in New York State—did so out of love, for financial incentives, for companionship, for legal rights and protections, for the symbolic significance, and for the chance to be a part of history. As a side benefit, pictures and accounts of their unions have warmed the hearts of many compassionate liberals, straight and queer. Now, we don’t wish to congratulate ourselves too much for having done little more than rooted for our state legislature to do something much of the rest of the civilized world has already done. But we do want to remember that equality—a condition that continues to be in shamefully short supply, not just in matters of marriage and sexuality but in all manner of legal statutes and long-held prejudices pertaining to all sorts of difference—is an ideal with very real consequences, most of all a perfectly reasonable and familiar kind of happiness.