[ellery]

Ok. Provided you agree to return the Church to the secular power it previously posessed. The real departure from tradtion has been the banishment of religion away from the public sphere. The state stepped in where it thought religion provided essential things it couldn't survive without - like marriage. Do you mean to get the state out of marriage and return to the prior condition? Or get the state out of marriage and see what our brave new world brings?

Your point is absolutely valid -- that the Church has much less power than it once did. But if the issue of marriage rested with the church alone, what more power would it need to perform the same function that the state now performs? Churches already decide based on their own regligious doctrine who may marry in said church. They also perform counseling, guidance and ceremonies. This could easily and fully replace what the state currently does(decides who can marry, issues a license, and performs the ceremony). No brave new world required.

[Snuffington]

Your point is absolutely valid -- that the Church has much less power than it once did. But if the issue of marriage rested with the church alone, what more power would it need to perform the same function that the state now performs? Churches already decide based on their own regligious doctrine who may marry in said church. They also perform counseling, guidance and ceremonies. This could easily and fully replace what the state currently does(decides who can marry, issues a license, and performs the ceremony). No brave new world required.

It's not that simple. THE CHURCH of old is hardly the same as today's strip-mall, roll-your-own church structure. Leave the ceremonies aside, in prior days the Church imposing excommunication for divorce was a serious penalty. A priest refusing to marry, didn't mean that you needed to go to Vegas instead, it meant you couldn't be married period.

You seem to view the Church (and modern state's) role as largely functionary and administrative. But the missing role (in both cases) is moral.

Not that the modern state is a bastion of morality of course. It just happened to internalize, formalize, and beauracritize an ancient moral institution. I'd love to see the state out of the picture. I just don't want this urge used as an excuse to devalue marriage itself. And since the state was the reason the Church became a mere formality in this issue, it's hardly proper for the state to abandon what it usurped and then blame the Church when it doesn't turn out so well.

[longtermmemmory]

The state has already supplanted religion. All priests who perform wedding ceremonies are notary publics. The may marry you in a religious capacity but the marriage license is signed in their notary (government) capacity. No government entititly recognizes a religion only marriage.

The way around religion only is in states with common law marriage. But those are procedures are systems which vary from state to state. Additionally it is tissue thin easy to repudiate such a marriage.

What is really being missed by the homosexuals is that they already have the means to contract. The can enter into a contract for domestic relations. The contract can be whatever they want BUT the institution of marriage. Pravatly they can contract, it is society and the public at large that has established the marriage as one man and one woman.

Final note, it is not mob rule to amend the constitution. It is a process. As a society and a democratic based Republic it is the means we set the rules of the society.