Marriage in America

When I first formed an opinion on the issue of "Gay Marriage", I didn't fully understand everything that is involved in getting married. I thought it was just a declaration of love between two people and didn't understand why it was such a big deal. After some ill prepared debate about it I decided to do some research about what is involved in a marriage, legally and yes religiously.

Marriage is historically a religious construct and "sacrament" (for those Catholics out there), but thousands of non-religiously affiliated people get married all of the time so the argument that a same-sex couple can't get married because it is a religious thing doesn't make any sense. The federal government recognizes it as a legally binding relationship.

Legally, marriage binds two people together and allows them to share many benefits.There are actually roughly 1,150 benefits legally associated with marriage. These include things like visiting rights in jail and hospitals, life insurance trusts, employee benefits like bereavement, pension benefits, family health insurance, and the list goes on and on. These things are all good reasons for people to choose marriage over simple cohabitation, but under the law, they only apply to a man and a woman. One might say (as I did): Cohabitation is an alternative option why can't people just agree to be together but not get married? Well what happens when they have a family and can't get health insurance from the employer because they are not listed as husband and wife. One also won't be eligible for time off work if the other suddenly passes away. Clearly, the two options, marriage and cohabitation, are not equal. Also, if marriage is a religious construct, how can there be strict legal entitlements for a married couple when we live in a country that boasts its separation between Church and State?

In sum: marriage is a religious construct, yet the government rewards people for following its doctrine. I understand that legal marriage has evolved from religious marriage (like you can get married in a courtroom now rather than a church), but why then, does the government have to follow the strict doctrine of the Church on what constitutes as a marriage and who can get married? There is (or rather should be) a distinction between a religious marriage and a legal one, and if not, there shouldn't be certain rewards from the government for following a religious doctrine.

If we want to get ahead of this big "Same-sex Marriage" problem, we need to ask ourselves, not what God thinks of it or try to allow two men to marry in a religious ceremony, but why the  heck does the state allow the church to run its personal business? We need to separate Church and State and see that under the government all are created equal in the "Land of Opportunities" and that one persons "pursuit of happiness" to spend the rest of their life with the love of their life should be rewarded regardless of the sexuality of their partner.