Though I've said mean things about essentialism before (hey! joke!), I opened Essence the other day and was happy to see an article about Michelle and Barack Obama that made sense. Here are two people who are more than each other's match (if that doesn't sound illogical), who have differing but very great strengths, who talk to each other, who evidently enjoy being together, who don't feel a great compulsion to act out gender roles (Michelle was for many years the higher earner, and you don't see Barack whining or overcompensating). For all the talk about Defense of Marriage that has been spouted in this country over the last few decades, this is the way to do it: show an example of what a strong marriage between strong people can be.
Normally, in this country when you talk about “defending marriage” the move is a punitive one. Cut gay folks out of it. Make it harder for non-gay married folks to divorce. Or, as happened in a very weird Science Tuesday article in the NYT, fantasize about a pill that would reduce your partner's inclination to be attracted to someone else. The punitive attitude betrays a feeling of inferiority and a forced quality in the standard American marriage which make it hardly seem worth defending. If you want to defend it, first give it a purpose and a value.