Beyond the literally
thousands of legitimate reasons why (pdf) the state does have a valid interest in codifying civil marriage under the law, from joint property, emergency medical decisions, child custody, inheritances, tax filing, etc. the call for "getting the state out of the marriage business" is a bad idea even from a political/rhetorical perspective.
I explain below the fold...
Ceding a word (and that is all it is) to the nut-jobs who oppose ending gender discrimination in marriage law does nothing to address the underlying problem, and would require rewriting thousands of local, state and federal laws for no purpose at all, because those opposed to same-gender marriage will still oppose turning all marriages into "civil-unions" which they in effect already are now. It will not appease those who hate non-heterosexuals or feel that not discriminating against non-heterosexuals will cheapen their "marriage".
Making marriage legally nothing, and making "civil-unions" become what currently is civil marriage, and then letting same-gender couples get them, is no different than simply stop discriminating based on gender, under civil marriage law.
It does nothing to change anything in the debate except to shuffle words around and then hope to force rewriting thousands of laws across hundreds of jurisdictions, with no legal instrument with which to compel states, etc. to do so.
But more importantly, it does nothing to undermine the mindless rhetoric coming from the bigot-brigade who will still oppose equal rights for non-heterosexuals but WILL hand them another rhetorical cudgel with them claiming that evil "liberals" and "activists" are playing a shell game and are directly writing marriage out of the law.
Try selling that.
"Gay, liberals and their activist allies are trying to write marriage out of the law."
Great fucking rhetorical weapon to hand them.
So can we focus on the real issue in the FMA, which is the GOP making a desperate move to re-energize their bigoted base while moving the focus off of the unmitigated disaster of their policies coming to fruition (from energy prices, Iraq, etc.)... and if we do discuss the real issue in the marriage debate, make it the legitimate one, that being ending gender discrimination under marriage law...?