on gay marriage and civil union

I have yet to hear an argument that convinces me that the state should sanction gay marriage.

But that is not because I have any objection to same gender marriage. In fact, I do not. And in fact, I was angry, disappointed, and frustrated by the passage of propositions in California, Florida, and Arizona defining marriage as only between a man and a woman on Tuesday.

So maybe I should start over.

I have yet to hear an argument that convinces me that the state should sanction any marriage. That's right, I don't believe the state should have anything to say about any marriage anywhere...ever.

The logic here is that the state has a legitimate interest in defining and defending the rights, privileges, and responsibilities that accrue to a committed life relationship between two people. When gay people want to engage in such a relationship, we give them something we call a civil union. There are valid arguments in favor of the state getting involved in civil unions. When two people commit to live together and share their lives in complex and intimate ways, there are issues that arise that are of real interest to the state; issues of responsibility, issues of privilege, and issues of rights. We all agree that a couple that commits to live under the same roof and share their property and traditions and responsibilities and families should be seen by the state as having special needs and responsibilities that deserve a unique legal status.

Historically, we have called this special arrangement between two people a marriage, and we have used marriage as the framework on which to hang these special rights, privileges, and responsibilities. But the fact that we call it marriage is a relic of religion and tradition. From a governance perspective, there is no functional difference between civil union and civil marriage. If you think this is not true, I challenge you to tell me the differences between marriage and civil union. Whatever distinction you can come up with will be based in tradition or in religious belief.

So the whole debate over whether or not the state should condone gay marriage is based on religious or traditional assumptions about who should be allowed to participate. This is blatantly unconstitutional. And in fact, this reveals the dirty little secret that the state has no valid jurisdiction over any marriage. We should drop the legal definition and laws governing marriage since, from a constitutional perspective, marriage cannot be different from civil union. Religion and tradition are not constitutionally valid differentiators between the two concepts.

My proposal is that the government should decree that all marriage licenses currently on file be converted to civil unions. It should be made clear that this change is made in order to remove any ambiguity about the state's lack of jurisdiction over the religious and traditional values held by the parties to these licenses. It should also be made clear that this change would have no effect on the validity of marriage, since such a commitment is between the parties to the commitment and their communities of faith and tradition. Following this change, all parties wishing to license their relationships for consideration by the state would receive civil union licenses and should be advised that they can get married within their own faith system if they so choose. It would be acceptable to license ministers to validate civil union licenses in conjunction with the marriages they perform, just as they do now with marriage licenses.

This change would completely diffuse the issue of gay marriage. Conservative Catholic, Evangelical, Muslim, and other faith communities would be free to ban gay marriage within their communities if they so choose, and other religious communities that condone gay marriage would be free to perform and validate such unions as well. None of this would be in any way significant to the legal status of any civil union. The state would define the criteria for a valid civil union based solely on the merits of the relationship as it fits into the standards involving the relevant rights, responsibilities and privileges of committed relationships between life partners.

I know this idea has a snowball's chance in Phoenix, but ideas always start somewhere, and who knows where it could end up...