Today's letter to the editor:

Here's what I sent to the editor of my local paper:

I fail to understand why the government is involved in marriage at all – gay, straight, or otherwise. Marriage is a spiritual union and government is not a spiritual organization. Let the Church marry people, and let the elected government set aside tax and other public benefits for those who choose to make a permanent family, regardless of the sex of its members. How is the government in a position to dictate who is a family and who is not?

As a straight person, I make this appeal for myself, as well. When I’m very old and the only person left who really loves me is my best friend, that’s who I would want to be my family. Because neither of us is homosexual, we wouldn’t seek marriage, but we would want to be a family. In effect, she’s the one I trust to decide what treatment I get in the event I arrive unconscious in an emergency room. This selection is not something I need to have defined by marriage.

Government should remove itself from the perceived moral part of the equation by eliminating marriage licenses altogether and replacing them with family licenses. Families would then be the permanent institution, dissolvable only by the equivalent of divorce, and with all the benefits of the current government-licensed marriage.

In this way, government doesn’t have to concern itself with the sexuality or gender of anyone in a family, the Church doesn’t have to approve of the government’s position on marriage, the Church doesn’t have to marry anyone it doesn’t want to marry, and people who want to be families can be families.