This is the third so-called compromise I have heard of in a month, and it's by far the worst yet.

Jonathan Rauch and David Blackenhorn proposed extending federal civil unions to state same sex marriages if they include exempions for religious organizations not to recognize them

Ryan T. Anderson and Sherif Girgis proposed creating federal civil unions open to all couples ineligible for marriage in exchange for keeping the Defense of Marriage Act.

Now this one is proposing throw out the word marriage from civil marriage and leave civil unions to both gay and straight couples in exchange for couples being able to marry in church. No way.

This will serve to extinguish marriage entirely. Church attendance is going down in this country, but religion has managed to leave a few very good and institutions, one of which is the idea that marriage is sacred. I'm all for people not having to ask the state's permission to get married, but I've met people who are not able to see marriage existing outside of a justice of the peace ceremony--something I only see as a piece of paper. Now we're talking about forcing that religious viewpoint--marriage is just a piece of paper--onto everybody. Forcing the meaning of marriage to die along with organized religion is completely unnecessary and is a great harm to those people who are not religious but who value marriage very strongly.

Bad enough that more and more people are popping out babies in their teens, shaking up for years, and letting fathers be pen pals. Now we want to say take cooperative child rearing out of marriage, take "this is a very special event" out of marriage, take out every statement that we want couples to stay together out of marriage. And for what? So religious fanatics can say gays are never getting married? So gay fanatics can say we'll each have the same incomplete half of marriage? No way.

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