Why I'm Still a Christian

[Lek]

http://www.freedomtomarry.org/pages/marr...rships-etc
Civil union and domestic partnerships are a second-class status, and when people take on all the commitments and responsibilities of marriage they should not be treated like second-class citizens. While these legal mechanisms provide a measure of protections to same-sex couples and their families, they are no substitute for the full measure of respect, clarity, security and responsibilities of marriage itself. They exclude people from marriage and create an unfair system that often does not work in emergency situations when people need it most......
CIVIL UNION: Civil union exists in three states: New Jersey, Illinois, and Hawaii. Civil union was first created in Vermont, in 2000, to provide some legal protections and responsibilities to gay and lesbian couples at the state level, but in 2009 the state legislature ended gay couples exclusion from marriage after realizing civil union created a second class citizenship.

Cobbled together as both the state and the nation were just beginning to engage in a conversation about the inherent unfairness of legal discrimination in marriage, civil unions have since proven to be ineffective, a separate but unequal status (pdf) that often heightens the need for access to both the tangible and intangible protections that only marriage can afford. The protections and responsibilities do not extend beyond the border of the states in which the civil union was entered, offer murky access to separation laws, and no federal protections are included with a civil union.

DOMESTIC PARTNERSHIP: Domestic partnerships are a form of union under which gay (and sometimes non-gay) couples in some states or regions can formalize their partnerships. Oregon's domestic partnership law went into effect in February 2008. However, as with civil union the status remains a separate and unequal legal compromise which does not apply when a couple travels out of state, and offers no federal protections. Aside from Oregon, a hodge-podge of domestic partnership laws (statewide/district-wide in Nevada) and registries offer a wildly varying selection of protections and responsibilities which can change from zip code to zip code. Many domestic partnership registries offer no rights or protections at all and simply serve as a written acknowledgment of a couple's commitment to each other.

If the government was out of the marriage business, then everyone would have the same status under the law. We could all enter into the same civil contract. We've made marriage into a legal contract, but that wasn't so in the beginning. To a christian, marriage isn't making a legal contract, but rather committing ourselves to each other, which needs no sanctioning from a civil authority. The legal contract isn't the marriage, but I also understand the need for a legal contract to protect the interests of the couple and children involved.