Stefanie wrote:
Mike the Usurper wrote:
I'm going to give you a completely different take on this. Marriage is traditionally a religious institution, adopted by the state for simple standards. If you want the best solution out of this you're going to get, here it is. Civil unions, with the state resolving the "separate but equal" issue by eliminating marriage as a state institution.
Marriage is between people and their church. If a church wants to marry gay people it will and there's not a damn thing the government can do to stop them. State amendment that says "marriage is between a man and a woman?" Tough shit state, freedom of religion in the first amendment trumps it. The only way out of that trap is for the government to either allow gay marriage, or eliminate marriage as a state institution.
In theory, if you could convince the entire country to give up legal marriage in favor of civil unions, and make those civil unions available to both heterosexual and homosexual couples alike, then you would effectively eliminate institutionalized discrimination, regarding marriage. That won't happen though, nor have Obama or McCain remotely hinted support for anything along the lines of your plan.
It would be much easier and much more realistic to pursue legalization of homosexual marriages (along the lines of Loving v. Virginia) than it would be to eliminate marriage as a legal institution regulated by the states. While marriage does have religious roots, it has become (for better or worse) a legal institution. It is a civil contract, regulated by state law, and there's more to state-regulated marriage than "simple standards," but that takes us even further off topic.
The fact is that marriage is currently government's domain, and that's so unlikely to change, that it doesn't merit serious consideration in 2008. The people of this nation aren't going to give up marriage as a legal institution and take it back to being simply a religious matter. Even if we followed your recommendation and used the term "marriage" only in religious contexts and "civil unions" in all legal contexts, "civil unions" would still be a political issue, because it would just be legal marriage by another name. You'd be taking the long way around the issue, without really solving anything.
Well interestingly, my description may be the result because of the "defense of marriage" state constitutional amendments getting tossed around. Iowa may be one of the first states to run head on into this problem. They don't have such an amendment, but the do have an appeals court ruling (currently stayed on appeal) that marriage/civil unions fall into "separate but equal" meaning unconstitutional. Forced definition of marriage as only between a man and a woman does NOT solve the issue, it eliminates marriage as a state option.
Ingrained or not, "defense of marriage" could be the one thing to kill it as a state institution.
