Beyond partners

Ending civil marriage would be a terrible mistake | Gene Edward Veith

Gay activists claim that allowing homosexuals to marry each other is not an assault on the institution of marriage. But to accommodate the gay agenda, some legal theorists and lawmakers are proposing drastic changes in the legal status of marriage.

The Maryland state legislature is currently considering a bill that would eliminate civil marriage. Instead, all couples would enter into a "civil union," the marriage lite arrangement originally crafted for homosexuals. Under the terms of the bill, the state's family law code would replace the word "marriage" with "valid domestic partnership."

The sponsor of the bill, Democratic state Sen. Jamie B. Raskin, is spinning the measure as a way to address religious concerns about gay marriage. "If people want to maintain a religious test for marriage," he said, "let's turn it into a religious institution." Couples would get their domestic partnership papers, and then, if they also wanted to be "married," they could go to a church, which could handle the matter according to its own teachings. Marriage would become a mere religious rite, with no special legal status.