"Don Tabor" wrote in message
...
That is to allow civil unions for any consenting adult couple which
provide those legal privileges and responsibilities currently attached
to marriage. Other than that, government has no function relating to
marriage.

Get your civil union registered at the courthouse, get married in
front of your church, family, friends, or bowling league, whatever
community will provide the emotional and social support for your
marriage.

Separation of marriage and state and all that.

Yes, that would be a reasonable solution. Let the government provide civil
unions, and let churches or whatever sanctify marriages according to
whatever criteria they want to use. (To this day, there are still some
churches that refuse to sanctify interracial marriages. Although their
policy is morally reprehensible, it is unassailably protected as part of
their free-speech rights, and properly so, since a religious sanctification
constitutes nothing but an expression of belief.)

But as long as the government does presume to certify "marriages", they
should do so without regard to the race or gender of the participants.

--Gary