"Jesus would rather kill, not marry, gay people" - Franklin Graham

[Ravenshire]

Ok, RR. I'll ask this question specifically of you since I've never seen you answer it when I ask it generally. Would you consider a change to civil unions as the only legal form of marriage-like status? If you want all the legal rights and responsibilities of "marriage" you have to have a civil union (automatically granted to all who are married when the law takes affect), removing all legal power from a church marriage. In short, get a civil union for all the legal stuff, a church marriage for the "in the eyes of gawd" stuff and let people choose if they want one, the other or both. Because as long as a secular government has the power to marry people, denying them the right to marry whomever they choose is a violation of their rights.

Ah, of course. I forgot about that phrase. That could be the "new" version I referred to in my PS. CUs could have all the legal power, and marriage could just be ceremonial. I see no problem with that, in theory.

I don't know if it's still the practice in Germany, but when my brother was married in 1980 he and his wife had two ceremonies. One, a legal ceremony, attended only by immediate family with a small dinner at his in-law's home afterwards. The other, a religious only affair that involved a cathedral, hundreds of people and a wedding party that lasted until almost dawn. I believe either one was optional, but I may be wrong on the legal one.