jducoeur

On the purely rational level, I largely agree with serakit on this. The *best* solution would be to get government entirely out of the "marriage" business. Remove the word "marriage" from civil law, change it all to civil unions, and provide really good equality before the law for those. Make it clear that "marriage" is a religious institution, and that the government is absolutely uninvolved with that. Marriages and unions would probably overlap by 90%, but that's not the concern of the law -- the point is to strongly decouple the religious and civil concepts.

I don't push that particular idea, because I don't think it stands the slightest chance of actually *happening* any time in the next 10-20 years: the politics just plain don't work. But I think it would be a very elegant solution were it possible...