Reply #12: Unfortunately, it's too late for that boat. [View All]

[Ms. Toad]

The massive rewrite of laws that would be required makes it unlikely that marriage, as a legal institution, will ever be replaced by civil unions. Those 1000+ rights associated with marriage are mostly legal rights - each with a statue or common law decision in every state or at the Federal level to back up the right. Each of these would need to be amended, or reviewed under common law principles.

Besides, the state institution of marriage is essentially a civil union that is called marriage because that is the word that every state and most countries use in their relevant statutes and legal decisions. The state sets up rules about who may be civilly married, and how such couples have to go about accomplishing it. Most states have an exception with respect to how marriages are accomplished that permits marriages performed by a religious entity, according to the rules of that religious entity, to be entitled to recognition by the state.

No such exception exists for religious variation as to who may be married, and as a result there are thousands of gay and lesbian religious marriages that are not recognized civilly, even though they meet the process exception for religious marriages.