My life has not shed the best light on the institution of marriage. I was raised by my mom, who is twice divorced, with my brother who is openly gay and thus restricted from ever marrying in certain states.

For these reasons it would be very simple for me to jump on the bandwagon bashing the institution of marriage. I could cite the high divorce rate of Americans and the inability of homosexual couples who love each other to get married as shining examples of how marriage is currently failing our society, all with the bitter sarcasm that life has so graciously gifted me.

Yet despite my life experiences and sarcasm, I can’t be brought to attack marriage as a detriment to our society. Are there issues with marriage? Of course, but at its core marriage is a crucial component of the human element that I cannot imagine society functioning without.

Yes, people such as Kim Kardashian who get married too quickly and divorce just as rapidly make marriage look like a sham. However, the love and care that people who marry for the right reasons possess makes up for the egregious decisions to marry made by those who divorce.

For every example of a bad marriage there is an example of a marriage that functions at a high level. Every day there are people celebrating multiple years of a lifelong commitment to each other. They have withstood the test of time and live each day with love, passion, and happiness that brings the most humanity out of them.

For these reasons, marriage is the ultimate fairy tale. Just like Cinderella or Snow White, the ideal of marriage forces us to believe that the world ends with a happily ever after.

It inspires and motivates us to search the world for love, despite the fact that we see so much hate and experience life’s continual disappointment. The 50 percent divorce rate of Americans proves that marriage does not grant a happily ever after ending to everyone; however it should not be what we judge the merits of marriage on.

We cannot judge marriage based on its failings, but instead should evaluate it on the happy endings that it can provide.

Loving marriages provide hope in happy endings, and thus increase the enjoyment of life.

According to a study in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy titled “What is Marriage,” the revisionist view of marriage is described as, “the union of two people (whether of the same sex or of opposite sexes) who commit to romantically loving and caring for each other and to sharing the burdens and benefits of domestic life. It is essentially a union of hearts and minds, enhanced by whatever forms of sexual intimacy both partners find agreeable.”

It is a poignant, beautiful statement of the importance that marriage has in our society. While it is easy to decry marriage as an out-of-date institution that we should be rid of, I can’t take that viewpoint.

The fairy tale, love, care and hope that marriage provides to our society makes it indispensable, even as the Kim Kardashians of the world do their best to sully its reputation.