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Separation of Church and State: Marriage v. Civil Unions

I just finished watching 20/20, and John Stossel's segment, "Give Me a Break," got me to thinking: maybe we are going about this whole gay marriage thing from the wrong angle. It is true that marriage is traditionally a religious institution. It originated through religious ceremony, and only through ancient theocracy did it become presided over by government law. Perhaps then marriage should be divorced (no pun intended) from modern civil law. After all, doesn't the United States Constitution contain an edict asserting the separation of church and state?

So how about dissolving marriage as a legal union, and reserve it as a spiritual one. Anyone who wishes to have their relationship recognized legally, whether same or opposite-sex, and receive all the legal benefits of the current civilly codified institution of marriage could then register their couplehood as a civil union. This frees up conservative evangelical churches from the horror of being forced to perform marriage ceremonies they feel to be abominations, and effectively severs all ties between legal protection under the law and religious institutions.

Marriage and civil unions would be totally seperate contracts. Marriage would be a spiritual contract between two people and their deity, presided over, and protected by religious institutions; civil unions would be legal, social contracts between two people--regardless of sex--and the state that would be presided over and protected by civil laws and purely secular. All civil unions would carry the same benefits and protections as modern marriage, and marriage, being a spiritual contract, would carry none outside the church.

There could be a provision where marriages could be registered as civil unions, thus cutting down on processes and paperwork. Couples wanting to legally commit would first apply for a civil union, then have the option of having it officiated by a civil judge or a licensed religious leader. The state would recognize a marriage registered as a civil union purely as a civil union that happens to be registered with a religious institution.

Admittedly, there is a downside to this theory. Divorcing someone would become more complicated, as any couple who is married and registered would have to dissolve the relationship through two institutions--the state and their church. Then married couples, and couples considering marriage, would have to give serious thought to their marriage and its dissolution. There would be a drop in the divorce rate (sorry divorce attorneys) and trivial marriage rate such as Britney Spears' 55 hour dip in the marriage pool (sorry Las Vegas insta-marriage chapels); thus the sanctity of marriage would then be preserved in its most basic form, but would not carry any specific legal rights.

Instead of making a seperate legal provision for same-sex couples in the interest of protecting the definition of marriage, lets just remove marriage from the legal equation altogether and make civil unions the law of the land, leaving marriage the law of the everafter.

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