Traditionally, the bride's parents.

Huh. My parents lucked out then, as their one daughter cannot currently marry her partner (and last time I talked to them, they had no interest in getting married. They are registered as Domestic Partners in the City of Madison, however.)

That's the thing, it's pretty much what we have now, but since it's called Marriage all kinds of church and religious issues get caught up into it. The idea of just having a legal contract seems to be okay for some people for gay marriage, and my take is that, well if it's that good, and it is truly equal, then all marriages become a simple legal contract called a domestic partnership and we remove the term marriage from it.

If folks want the term marriage applied to their union, then it is something they can do but that has no legal impact on the domestic partnership.

Gotcha. I can see that argument, but in some ways that seems like an even harder change to make than expanding who has the right to marry.

At my wedding we (the bride and groom) paid for most things, the groom's parents paid for some things and my Dad picked up the enormous bar tab.

everyone else has domestic partnership

Depends on what state you live in. Most states don't have anything at all for the rest of us.

And for the record, I certainly wouldn't mind the churches handling something called "marriage" and the government handling something called "civil union" or "domestic partnership" or the like.

Sex with ducks and gay marriage are one and the same.

that seems like an even harder change to make than expanding who has the right to marry.

that's the crux of the biscuit for me.

Marriage provides more rights than domestic partnership's, which are very fuzzy, particularly if you've moved to a place that doesn't have domestic partnership. Marriage gives you uncontested right to things like your spouse's pension and specific inheritance rights.

Marriage provides more rights than domestic partnership's, which are very fuzzy, particularly if you've moved to a place that doesn't have domestic partnership. Marriage gives you uncontested right to things like your spouse's pension and specific inheritance rights.

And this is precisely the reason I'd like to see all marriages turned into domestic partnerships. If the two are truly equal then there should be no complaints. Somehow I think there would be a LOT of complaining if this were actually be proposed.

Yeah, I think the best solution would be basically what everyone else is saying -- civil marriage, between any two consenting adults, as something the state handles, and religious marriage, between whoever that particular religion thinks ought to be allowed to get married, as something that religions handle.

Which leads me to ponder -- if this were the system, should churches be allowed to marry people that the state says cannot marry? Like kids or polygamy. (I've actually got no problem with polygamy if everyone is consenting adults, but it would be a royal pain to try to amend all the laws that would need to be amended for that to work out, legally.) Right now, if a minister performs a marriage ceremony between two kids, or between a kid and an adult, he can be charged with performing a marriage without a license, right? So, if we made state marriage and religious marriage totally separate, could he still be charged with that? He'd still be charged with a bunch of other things, like abetting statutory rape or something like that, but would performing the ceremony itself be illegal?

(Honestly, I'm not sure what I want the answer to that question to be. I'm just trying to work out the logic.)