[gwern]

> The article details the gymnastics required, required only of gay couples, to approximate those rights.

Now you are moving goalposts. First you were all 'look at how total a failure this is and how this is proof marriage is the only possible option'; when I point out that it worked out just fine for all the people who did it, now you're backpedaling to complaining about 'gymnastics'.

And as gymnastics go, having a parent fill out a form, enduring a rubberstamp social worker visit, and filling out some more paperwork is hardly an Olympic-level feat; especially when one consider what this gets you (a clever legal hack to secure a very large set of legal rights that would be unobtainable otherwise for 40 years or more, going by the mentioned years). The surprising thing is that it wasn't more common.

> The article details the patchwork quilt of rights, the limits, the variation among States, that resulted from this sort of "solution."

The article details how this worked out quite well for them. I don't see much of a 'patchwork' or discussion of the limits, or how the variation was a serious problem. (If you read OP, the biggest problem described seemed to be a hypothetical legal conundrum about some incest laws that the lawyers were still arguing between themselves about.)