Shouldn't the state concern itself with the legal business of allowing
people to create a legal union -- regardless of their sexual
orientation -- rather than concerning itself with marriage?
All couples in Vermont who want to become legally conjoined should have
a civil union or a state-approved legally binding union that carries
all the benefits, rights, responsibilities and privileges of a
marriage.
Any couple desiring another layer of ceremony for their union can then
take their union to a church for a marriage ceremony. Churches can and
do decide what types of couples to marry.
Legally, couples form a union and religiously they are free to do
whatever their churches will do. And a religious ceremony alone
wouldn't be enough to achieve a legal union. Legal unions should be a
specific, state-sanctioned status that all couples have equal access to
and equal rights within.
This is an issue of fundamental fairness and equal protection of the
law. But it is also an issue of keeping an appropriate separation of
church and state.
We would squawk if the state was involved in baptisms, a bris,
funerals, confirmations, first communions and other religious
ceremonies. Why is it acceptable for the state to be involved in the
religious ceremony of marriage?
Matrimony should be the purview of religious institutions. The state
has no business in the business of matrimony. It would be cleaner,
fairer and simpler to separate all couples' legal unions from the word
marriage.
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