I was emotionally bushwhacked as I watched the TV coverage of the first lawful gay and lesbian marriages in Massachusetts. To my surprise, I found the scenes deeply moving.

I say ‘‘surprise'' because, although I have written about this matter off and on, my gut has never been involved. I have weighed the yeas and nays with the kind of practiced, not to say jaundiced, assay that those of us in the opining rackets routinely bring to such emotionally resonant issues as, say, tax policy or the federal highway fund.

In that sere bookkeeper's mode, I have, while not objecting to the prospect of gay marriage, generally preferred civil gay unions, with full partner benefits, as a middle ground, perhaps as a transition to marriage when enough people eventually become accustomed to the idea to let it occur without much fuss.

I have been mystified about why some straight folks think their marriages would somehow be demeaned or undermined and even invalidated if gays and lesbians marry. But at the same time, I understand that gay marriage would be a shock to the social nervous system. The idea might have more lasting power if it came in tiptoeing rather than stomping.

Polling finds most of us these days no longer willing to see gays and lesbians discriminated against, and the sizeable minority that supports carrying that simple decency all the way to licensing marriage has been steadily growing toward a likely eventual majority. So why force the issue?

The answer is, because the curtesies of our shared humanity compel it.

In this early going, the couples lining up for the marriage registry often have been together 10 years, 20. Thirty, even. These are not overnighters on a marriage toot, Britney Spears in a Vegas giggle chapel. They are couples — they are families — that have loved one another durably, through all the merriments and the stresses, successes, disappointments and angers that are the common currency of shared lives.

They absolutely radiate joy. And the vividness of that joy is a measure of how deep the sense of deprivation must have been in the years when they could not declare their union openly and in easy concert with all around them.

Modern marriage is a rickety state. If gay marriage won't further harm it, as the alarmists fear, let's not be silly: gay marriage isn't going to help it, either. As the practice becomes commonplace, gay divorce will flourish.

But for now, there's this huge swell of excitement, so palpable and genuine you can feel it even at a distance. The people who are trying to stop gay marriage tell us that if we let it continue, the next thing you know everyone will be looking on gays and lesbians as if they were just like everyone else.

The opponents may be right about that, if we're all lucky.

Tom Teepen is a columnist for Cox Newspapers.