Indeed. When I was living in Texas I met a lovely turtle with a right purty mouth. Things got a little heavy and suffice it to say I found out the hard way the difference between a snapping turtle and a box turtle.
Marc
The OPs solution reminds me of proposals to abolish public schools rather than let them proceed on a desegregated basis.
As usual, there are a bunch of issues, some of them terminological, being assumed by participants in this debate – and the same holds true for every time I’ve seen this issue brought up, on this board or another.
My initial comment is related to terminology: There are three distinct institutions being confuted in any discussion of “marriage” as an institution:
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The religious rite and resultant state of being whereby two persons covenant before God to be united as spouses, entering into a state of life on which religious texts are rife with analogies, metaphors, etc. And that state of being is reasonably restricted to those whom that faith community feels can duly covenant such a relationship. Does God as you understand Him frown on first cousins marrying? Stepsiblings? Persons with a spouse still living? Persons of the same sex? Very well, then your faith community is excused from being a party to such people covenanting a marriage in their faith community.
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The civil institution in which the state recognizes a very unique and special contract between two people and agrees to enforce certain rights and responsibilities as between them and as between it and them. This must carefully be distinguished from the religious institution in #1. And it is up to the majority of citizens of a society to decide who may so contract – or that it will recognize a right to marry, subject to whatever restrictions it chooses, that may not be abrogated by majority vote.
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The contract or covenant entered into by two people where they recognize each other as the person to whom they are married, whether or not church or state deign to recognize that relationship or not. Common-law marriages, married gay couples in 47 states that do not recognize gay marriages or civil unions, and a host of other relationships fall in this category.
I stand with Northern Piper in saying that my marriage is something very important to me, and the whole garbage of people saying that the state should “abolish marriage” as a legal concept is odious to me as it is to him. At the same time, and I believe he agrees with me and Guinastasia on this, there are no real instutional bars to a jurisdiction legally recognizing any couple desiring to contract a marriage type #3 as a marriage type #2, gay marriages included.
What God may think or not think about the issue is relevant to type #1 marriages and has no business being enforced as relates to type #2 or type #3 marriages – at least not in a country where freedom of religion is an enshrined right.