Redefine Marriage for the 21st Century

Here is a letter I sent on March 2, 2008 to my representatives in the North Carolina General Assembly and the United States Congress, and to the group called Americans United for the Separation of Church and State:

I believe that a religious marriage having legal standing is a blatant violation of the separation of Church and State, and invites divisive efforts like Constitutional Amendments defining who can marry, when that is a personal choice with no place in public discourse. "Marriage" is a religious sacrament, and has no place being involved in the legal system and automatically giving couples certain legal rights. As it stands now, nearly every single religiously-ordained person in the U.S. is a de facto official of the State by letting them sign the civil license.

This system is a holdover from the Holy Roman Empire ; therefore, in the 21st century, this erroneous connection between rights within a civil union and the personal and spiritual obligations of religious marriage should be abolished. It only exists because the Government and people in all States "don't want to do two things", even though, logically, obtaining legal status and obtaining religious blessing SHOULD be two separate things. This whole socio-political morass over same-sex marriages would be solved in a moment if "marriages" already performed were grandfathered as legal, and then ALL couples from that point on - whatever their gender combination - would be required to sign a civil union contract that determined things like shared taxes, inheritance rights, child custody, hospital visiting rights, and all other rights now associated with "marriage". Then either before or after signing such legal papers, the couple could go to their church of choice for whatever sanctification ceremony they wanted.

As always, individual States would be allowed to determine who can get a legal civil union, but no State or Federal government would or should ever be allowed to determined who is joined in HOLY matrimony. Religious ceremonies would likewise hold no legal standing, as it only right. Once marriage and civil union contracts are separate, all officiants would be allowed to exercise their religious opinions by marrying or not marrying same-sex couples, and people would either agree with them or not.

Please preserve the rights established by the Constitution and propose legislation to separate religious marriage from the legal rights and responsibilities of a civil union. Free and fair - now, that's the definition of "American."

Thank you for your time and kind consideration.