Here is the real problem with this marriage controversy: "Marriage" is a religious term. The historical mistake that has been made is that, for some reason, our government has taken up the business of marriage in order to legislate the makeup of a family for the purposes of defining how issues of wealth and other legal matters will be handled during a person's life and after their death. When you take an honest look at marriage from our government's perspective, it is not about love or sharing your life with someone else. It is about legal issues involving wealth (such as inheritance, spousal support, filing taxes, etc.) and personal decisions in which society has some sort of interest (such as medical decisions, child custody, etc.). I believe that government should not have any hand in "marriage" as this should be a personal issue between a person, their church, clergy, and their God.
I believe that it is a constitutional ideal that a person has absolute right to share their wealth, benefits, family matters (children), medical decisions, tax deductions, and property during and after their life with whomever they choose - regardless of the gender of their partner. In an ideal, truly free society with the rights to life, liberty, and property, a government would have no involvement at all in these decisions. However, since there can be an argument made for the need to track, for legal purposes, the person with whom one shares their life and property, I believe that there should be government recognized civil unions for EVERYONE - again, regardless of the gender of those in the union.
So, my proposal is that NOBODY receives a marriage license from the government anymore. All people who wish to notify the state that they intend to share their lives & property with another person will pay a small fee for a civil union license. All couples, regardless of gender, will be issued this license by the government so that the government may keep track of who these couple are. In the eyes of the government and society, they will be a "legally recognized couple" - husband and wife, wife and wife, or husband and husband. Also, since marriage licenses have already been issued to couples in the past, the government would continue to recognize those couples who received marriage licenses prior to this change as "legal couples".
Once a couple applies for their civil union license with the government, any couple that wishes to also be married in the eyes of God would apply to their church for a church marriage and would follow whatever rules their church requires to complete that marriage. The government should have absolutely no say in who is married by a church. So, a church that does not recognize same sex marriage will not be forced to perform such ceremonies. On the other hand, a church that does recognize same sex marriage will be able to perform that ceremony according to their beliefs. This leaves the sacrament of marriage where it belongs - a personal decision as recognized by a couple, their family, their church, their clergy, and their God.
I believe that this proposal would be a solution to the marriage issue that would allow everyone to move forward. It would take very little effort to make these changes, but it would make a big difference to a large number of people. It would empower couples to receive the marriage sacrament in a church that recognizes their marriage with no involvement from government and also empowers individual religions to perform marriage ceremonies according to their own traditions. It would allow all couples to be recognized by the government for the purpose of sharing their life decisions and wealth with whomever they choose. Furthermore, it would allow atheist and agnostic couples the right to be a "legal couple" without the involvement of religion or religious terminology. In other words, this process would eliminate the current entanglement of church and state as it applies to legally defining couples.
For those of you who disagree with this, but call yourselves conservatives, I would like to point out the intellectual dishonesty of saying that you believe in less government involvement in our personal lives while also attempting to legislate your personal religious beliefs on other citizens. If you truly believe that we are endowed by our creator with the inalienable rights, then you cannot argue with another's right to share their life, property, and decisions with whomever they choose - even if you disagree with their choices. As long as a person's choices do not hurt another person or deprive another person of any of rights, who are you to decide what another free person may or may not do? Your disagreements on religious grounds are certainly open for discussion under freedom of speech, but they should not be open for interpretation by our government. The moment you empower government to make any decisions of a religious nature is the same moment that you give your rights over to government and limit your own freedoms.
