Originally Posted by NikKay

First of all, I'm not saying this is a stupid idea because it's coming from a good place. Your idea is to create a solution that can make everyone feel comfortable, which is idealistic but there are a couple of issues with it.

1. Civil unions as they are currently suggested in the US do not allow the full set of rights provided by Marriage. They would have to be enacted and enforced on a FEDERAL level and completely cover all the things that Marriage provides from a legal standpoint. Creating separate sets of law for 2 completely similar cases is fiscally wasteful, not to mention downright silly.

2. Even if there were no substantive differences in the way the law treated Marriages and Civil Unions, the fact that a Civil Union remains a separate status represents real and powerful inequality. We?ve been down this road before in this country and should not kid ourselves that a separate institution just for gay people is a just solution here either.

Get this:France currently offers both Civil Marriage and Civil Unions. France's Civil Union law was created in 1999 because gays were not allowed to marry, and they didn't want gays to be able to marry. Now, after 10 years, one third of all straight couples getting "hitched" in France opt for Civil Unions instead of Marriage. The number of Civil Unions has grown annually from 6,000 in the first year of the law to 140,000 in 2008 - with 92% of the civil unions last year involving straight couples.

Here's an idea:

<Find> Marriage <Replace with> Civil Union
and let the church provide official "marriages" complete with their own list of guidelines if they feel the need to alienate certain classes of people. Our government should NOT be in the business of citizen alienation.