Interesting argument, and one that's got the underpinnings to actually be effective in the courts, but not perhaps in the minds of the 51 percent who will still hate gays and lesbians for hijacking marriage.

Actually, speaking as a gay man, I'm not particularly in favor of same-sex "marriage."

I'll probably take a lot of hell for this, here and with many of my friends and family.

I had been thinking about writing a diary on this, so I won't give everything away, but here's a bit of how it goes:

Marriage is a religious institution. Always had been, until the government realized they could make a few bucks from marriage licenses and screwing most married couples on their federal taxes. The government hijacked a religious union in order to profit. Just so happens that vertually every religion has marriage, so the government could do this across the board -- except to gay people. Why would the gov't not want to take that extra advantage of gays and lesbians? Well, maybe it's as simple as they'd have to acknowledge us, and maybe it's because the wrath of religious zealots is too much to bare for less than 10- percent of all marriages.

Opposing forces: religion, gov't revenues, and legal/social recognition that we exist.

OK... well, so the gov't needs to decide whether or not it wants to be int he religion business by licensing, sanctifying, taxing the union of two people based on a religious celebration. Well, that answer is clear: it does want to do this.

Social conservatives want marriage to be between a man and a woman. Well, as the joke goes, if they really want to stop sex between two men, let them get married  :-D

But seriously, marriage is theirs and why shouldn't they be upset? It's different for religions (mostly native/aboriginal) that would unite two people of the same sex, but it's different for Catholics and Jews and all the rest. If they come around, that's fine but why should so much energy be spent on trying to move a mountain with a teaspoon when so much more could be done so much faster with so much less effort.

Change the context and there may be some answers -- not necessarily different answers than what I or others haven't already said, but I'm trying to show my work here.

If you look at the goals of the three parties involved (the real goals, not the ones that say we're to be burned at the stake, or used as political wedges for the next campaign) -- 1) gov't, 2) same-sex couples wanting to be 'married,' and 3) traditionalists who want to 'protect' marriage from... some sort of something, you get three very different things that require a different sort of solutions than "marriage" for gay and lesbian couples:

The government wants:

• revenues
  
• controls

Same-sex couples want:

• validation from society and/or family and friends
  
• formal commitment from partner
  
• equal recognition and benefits allowed to others who are 'married'
  
• to start a family

Traditionalists want:

• tradition
  
• exclusion of gays and lesbians

No judgement calls here. Traditionalists want to exclude gays and lesbians from their club. That's OK with me -- it's their club and that's their right.

And governmental goals like divisiveness aside, there's really not much there; it has no real or assumed interest in regulating marriage other than as 1) an income stream or 2) a tool to create acrimony between the so-called left and right. They're definitely getting more milage out of the divisiveness, or they would've made it legal already for gays and lesbians to get married.

So when we take a real hard look at the goals of these three groups, there's really not much that divides them... and not much that unites them either.

Let the government license, tax and monitor civil unions -- civil, as in civil services performed by judges. Civil unions, performed by a civil servant, are the only unions that count when it comes to legal status, rights, and responsibilites. The gov't isn't supposed to have any material jurisdiction in matters of religious ceremonies. Ummm... do they give you a deduction for bris? A bar mitzvah? Confirmation? Then why do they provide a deduction for a wedding ceremony?

Let gay and lesbian couples have civil unions that allow them to be licensed and taxed like straight couples. Let them have a 'marriage' if there's a church that will marry them. Make every straight couple register for a civil union. Let straight couples get married in a church, however only civil unions qualify for "Filing Jointly" status, though.

Let the traditionalists have their religion and their marriage, to the exclusion of gays and lesbians. I can understand that they're pissed off already because the gov't hijacked their ceremony to make money, and straight couples complain about how unfair the 'marriage tax' is. Well, that's the way it goes but why in the world would I add insult to injury by hijacking they're ceremony in order for me to be married to my partner -- and let's be serious here, religion does not belong to the masses, religion belongs to the church and the synagogues and the mosques, et al, so any retort from a same-sex couples that "it's my religion too and they should marry us," doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

I really like the argument you presented above, and it'd be nice to see it tried and for it to succeed. But I personally believe that we're spending much time on a direction that has much easier solutions elsewhere that are more palatable for a larger proportion of the population.

Nothing is as easy in real life as it is in writing, but maybe it's something to think about.