Excellent post, Peter. I agree with a lot of your assesment of the situation (especially the part where you were agreeing with mine!)

I do wonder, what really should constitute a secular definition of marriage if the state is going to stay involved. By that I mean, why should the Mormans (or anyone else for that matter) be limited to only one wife?

In the end, I wish "church" marriage and "state" marriage were not the same thing. We live in a secular society, so it really is the government's responsibility to address people's needs in a fair and equitable way. If two people are raising a child and one decides to stay home and take care of said child instead of working, it really isn't fair to deny that person health benefits. It really isn't a spiritual or belief issue at that point. I think it's good for society to allow parents to stay home and spend personal time with their children as they develop, and while I personally feel uncomfortable with same sex partners raising a child as a family unit, I'm even more uncomfortable with the idea that one of the pair might have to be denied medicle benefits in order to give a child his or her full attention.

At this point I see no easy solution, because both church and state are involved and it's pretty ingrained in both. However I see this, though, in the end same-sex marriage is coming whether people like it or not. I think Bush is really only giving lip service to the issue at this point to please his conservative base; he knows there isn't going to be any amendment to the constitution.