imported post
Of course it is. First, it gives "licenses" for "marriage", and then it gives privileges to those who get the license.
You might as well call it a civil union since "marriage" is in fact a religious function, but either way government has no business denying equal privileges to every citizen, regardless of whether he personally shares the religious belief that marriage must be between a man and a woman. The Constitution requires as much.
However, since government has no business saying word one about any religious tenet (like marriage), privileges shouldn't be granted to any couple based on it. Even for hetero couples the government should only grant privileges (if any) for unions, not "marriages".
But I consider whether government should be involved with a religious function a distinct issue from whether privileges should apply to all persons regardless of sexual orientation (or any other number of characteristics).
Edit: Make no mistake, marriage is a religious concept regardless of whether or to what extent government involves itself with it.
Allow me to demonstrate:
I am not a religious person. And so, concomitantly, I place no value in any concept of "marriage". If two people choose to form a union, they may do so with equal permanence without any sort of ceremony whatsoever. (In fact, this isn't so uncommon as some would like to have us believe.) But the value of the act is totally dependent upon that placed in it by the participants, and so it is ultimately of their own creation.
Now, you could argue that such a union is, by definition, a "marriage". And in common law it might be. But in the popular conception, where marriage occurs after a ceremony or some other "official" act of recognition, it is clearly not.
And so you can see that whether one has any faith in the ceremonies or official recognitions that represent "marriage" may be wholly an issue of religious belief.
It's also something of a cultural norm, but since when did those have significant weight, or did government become involved in them? Not wearing hats indoors also used to be a cultural norm. :quirky