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The problem isn't the fact that people want to change the legal definition of marriage. The problem is that there is a legal definition of marriage in the first place. Once the state has decided to recognize the institution of marriage, and grant special rights and priviledges based on that recognition, marriage becomes a legitimate political football, and the destruction of the institution is all but guaranteed.

In a liberal society, we will deny ourselves nothing. So if the definition of marriage must be expanded to all possible permutations in order to avoid discriminating against ever smaller segments of the population, it will be expanded. This is the way the "ratchet effect" works.

Our society would be better served if marriage was not a legal concept. Property rights and parental rights are already handled outside the context of marriage for a large portion of our population. Laws could be passed to grant more liberal rights of power-of-attorney and survivorship benefits at a fairly low societal cost. Parental rights can be based on actual parental relationship, as modern medical testing makes the notion of presumptive paternity obsolete.

Thus marriage can continue to be what it has always been, a covenant between individuals. If a man and women want to marry in the traditional sense, they may do so. But the civil and legal appurtanences to marriage would be a seperate thing. The "standard package" would be developed quickly and could be entered into as simply as a marriage licence is today. If people want more detail or a more complicated arrangment, they could do what many already do today through pre-nuptial aggreements. And if two men or two women want to do the same thing, they may also do so.

This way marriage is preserved as a relationship between individuals and the state does not get involved in saying who is and who is not married. Any system that requires governmental definition will inevitably lead to progressive erosion of the institution until it is all but meaningless. We are about two steps from that point today. We should not take the next step in that direction.

I think your ideas are excellent, but I seriously doubt this will happen. The entire push of the so called "gay agendo" is to legitamize homosexuality through co-opting traditional rites, practices, and institutions of the larger heterosexual community. I don't see that there is much to be done to stop this and I don't see it as a threat to my beliefs or even what God intended those things to be. They are still what they are. There has not been a law written nor will there be that subverts God's law. That aside, this issue should not be settled based on religion. It should be settled based on the democratic process.

"We are about two steps from that point today."

And those steps are working their way through Congress right now, with the boisterous support of most FReepers, a Constitutional Amendment defining marriage.

We are pushing to grant the Federal government jurisdiction to forever define marriage, giving away the right of the separate States to do it.