Click on the image below to see the gallery from the NY Times (4 photos).

Erwin Olaf for The New York Times

VASSILI & MARC: Engaged. Vassili, 24, and Marc, 24, still live with their parents, who for months didn’t know about their sons’ impending nuptials

Benoit Denizet-Lewis, a contributing writer for the The New York Times, covers the story of young gay men getting hitched in their 20’s. In ‘Young Gay Rites,’ Benoit discusses engagement, marriage, in-laws, monogomany, and divorce. He presents four couples, and some divorced guys, each with their own definition of commitment, and examines their drive to marry. 

He says, “When I first learned that some young gay men were marrying in Massachusetts, I wondered if their marriages might be a repudiation of the gay world fashioned by previous generations of men — men who reacted to oppression and homophobia in the ’70s and ’80s by rejecting heterosexual norms and “values,” particularly around sex and relationships… But most of the young married men I spent time with insisted their marriages weren’t a “reaction” to anything. They valued their connection to modern gay culture, and they weren’t interested in choosing between being a married man and a young gay man. They could be both, and they could make it work.”

Benoit presents Marc and Vasilli, two young men, whose commitment definitely includes monogamy. “I know that some gay couples who’ve been together awhile open up their relationships,” Marc said, “but we’re not going to do that. I mean, we wouldn’t be getting married if we didn’t plan on being monogamous. To me, that’s a fundamental and important part of marriage.”

And then there’s Brandon A. and Brandon L., who said, “Most straight people like to talk a great game about monogamy,” Brandon A. said. “But what are they actually doing? Many of them have affairs at some point or break up because they want to sleep with somebody else. We’re two guys, we’re in our 20s, we haven’t been sexual with that many people, and to pretend like we’re never going to want to experience sex with another person until the day we die doesn’t make sense to us. We’re open to exploring our sexuality together in a way that makes us both comfortable.”

To read the full article, click here.

Benoit Denizet-Lewis, a contributing writer for the magazine, is the author of “America Anonymous: Eight Addicts in Search of a Life” and “American Voyeur: Dispatches From the Far Reaches of Modern Life,”both to be published in January.