ManifestOfKujata wrote:
Meh, I dont think the state should be able to marry anyone, gay or straight. Marriage is a religious thing that should have nothing to do with the state.
The only thing the state should be doing is recognizing couples as a legal single entity (well, under the provisions straight people have) - which can be separate from marriage while guaranteeing hospital visitation rights, tax filing rights, inheritance rights, etc to gays and straights alike. While the religious conservatives will still *****, it wont be as loudly.
"Marriage" means precisely, to those who want it expanded, your entire second paragraph.
"Marriage" is a legal entity at present. If you think it would be easier to completely remove the use of it as a word from the legal and governmental lexicons, replacing it with an entirely reconstructed but identical concept, and codifying the distinction between religion and secular "marriage," creating entirely new restrictions both on church and state, purely to appease who are lost in the foggy mire of the practice of confusing themselves with words, rather than to simply expand an already practical definition to other groups, then that would be silly.
Edited, Nov 8th 2009 1:48pm by Pensive