| Joelcool7 said: Marriage no matter which way you slice it is a religious institution [...] |
And yet I can get married in city hall by the mayor. Granted, that's in Denmark, which isn't covered by any of the legal documents you described, but I'm pretty sure you can be declared married by the court in the US.
Either way, marriage is not purely a religious institution, and as superchunk accurately said, marriage is a contract. The marriage you're thinking of is the christian equivalent of an ancient tradition. The problem with marriage today in the western world, is that it's the christian version of marriage that is built into the norms of society rather than a government based marriage.
I think being married is a right to every pair/group of consenting adults, but only in the contractual form. The christian form is reserved for those who wish to follow that, and the same goes for every other kind of marriage.
