Originally Posted By: wfaulk
Do you argue that ministers should be unable to act as a notary of the marriage contract? If not, that's basically the way it is now.

I don't believe that all 50 states treat a "civil union" as identical to a "marriage" in all legal or contract law respects yet.
I think that California has since 2000 or so, but I don't think that is yet uniform across every state.
But with that done, I certainly wouldn't care who acts as a notary.

Originally Posted By: wfaulk
Well, you asked why gay people are not okay with a "civil union". And the answer is because the state currently calls those "marriages". If you get a contract that says "marriage" if you're marrying a person of the opposite sex, and a contract that says "civil union" if you're marrying a person of the same sex, that is separate. If you want to say that all such contracts should be labelled "civil union", I think that the gay community would be fine with that. But you didn't include that sentiment in your question.

That is exactly what I meant in my original post on this topic when I said "I don't know why the state is involved in 'marriages' at all".

Originally Posted By: wfaulk
What this comes down to is that the state is determining your legal ability to be married based on whether or not (you claim) you're in a romantic relationship. Which, when you think about it, is just ridiculous.


Fully agreed. That was my point.
The state can deal with contracts.
They can leave the romance and religion to other parties.