I live in Florida, where unfortunately, like CA and AZ and a myriad of other states, we just wrote discrimination into our State's Constitution. Unfortunately, it not only declared that "marriage is the legal union of one man and one woman as husband and wife," but also declared that "no other legal union that is treated as marriage or the substantial equivalent thereof shall be valid or recognized."
I believe it is high time that we need to stop saying "gay marriage." Marriage does not have a sexual orientation. The average person on the street hears the phrase "gay marriage" and at least partially thinks of a church ceremoney. There are GLBT people in opposite-gender unions.
I believe we need to start calling this "civil same-gender marriage." Yes, its a mouthful, but it would allow us to get people who can be convinced that this harms them not one bit.
It would take the religious angle out of it by actually getting people we need to convince to realize that this is only the government, the secular church-and-state-are-separate government, recognizing relationships entered into by two consenting adults, regardless of gender. Separating the religious contract from the civil contract with the state and federal government are crucial to winning the right to a civil marriage!
Those whose goal it is to enact laws based upon a rigid set conservative religious views are unreachable. They are theocrats. I say if you want a country run by religion, go to Iran!
Once we remind those who are more open to ideas of social progress that while yes, the civil and religious (if a couple so chooses to have a religious ceremony) contract CAN both be entered into at the same time and place, that the two contracts answer to different authorities, so to say, we win. Same-gender couples are NOT going to storm the Mormon churches, more than likely.
Take my mom and my dad for instance. I come, like perhaps many of you, from an interfaith family. My dad is a semi-practicing Conservative Jewish man. My mom is a non-practicing Roman Catholic woman. While they have divorced since the late 80s, they were married in the early 1970s in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Neither MA nor the federal government had any issue with recognizing this union. Do you think they found a single Conservative Jewish syangogue or Roman Catholic Church to have their ceremony performed in? HA!
Americans still, for whatever reason, have issues with SEX. You turn the phrase "same-sex" into "same-gender" and perhaps people just think of the two men or two women that live down the street from them instead of that couple in their bedroom. Take the "ick" factor out.
In my humble opinion, the definition of civil marriage in the statutes of every single state, commonwealth, territory, etc and the federal goverment should read as follows: "Civil marriage is a contract entered into by two non-related consenting adults."