You are entirely correct, but we don’t need to toss out the legislature regarding marriage. Rewrite it. “A marriage is defined as the union of two or more consenting adults, enforcing all rights of participants, of legal age to join in such under religious ceremony or rite.” You could also add a rider for common-law or other forms of unions.

Thus, the state defines a marriage, but it allows for all forms of marriages. It does not question gender or quantity of individuals, and does not bar the other cases you are talking about. Marriage certificates would still be required, as would marriage licenses. You would just have to modify how they read, as well. It should never be about approving or denying a choice, but writing the law in a fashion that allows for all of them without restricting any of them.

When -I- say legislating morality, I mean using out-dated or overly-religious moral codes (whether mine, yours, or someone elses) to pass laws or bills. In this day and age, there are enough people of differing opinion out there to pass less-biased (but still rational and wise) legislature if everyone is involved. Unfortunately, everyone isn’t. The goal should be making sure the spirit of the law is not overwritten by the letter of the law. Take, for instance, the changes set forth by the Texas School Board this year; those were over-zealous, Bible-driven choices, not rational or common-sense ones. Or, removing the word “Gay” from the vocabulary of children in TN. This is no different than the last 100 years of Russian policy in changing their history with each party and regime change; you take from the children, and they are the worse for it.

Posterity, and legacy. THESE are the things that should be considered when laws are made, not how it makes biased old men and women feel good about signing poor legislative choices.

If I had my choice (incredibly narcissistic as it is) I would say, hire a team of lawyers from all walks of life and varied backgrounds. Put them to work going through Federal law, modernizing and rewriting them. Then, toss the old, outdated, and over-modified laws. Once Federal law is corrected, leave it to each state to correct theirs, utilizing Federal law as a basis or utilizing a similar process.

To fix what is wrong with our nation will require great change, more than any one leader could do in 4 or 8 years without full support of his/her government and people. Unfortunately, these days we seem to be so lost on our own agendas. I say “we” as the “collective we” and not the individual, of course.

I’ll make a possibly odd suggestion: read some conservative Christian novels. Not all Christian authors are conservative, of course, but the ones that are have to deal with romance and sex and sometimes even rape in ways that don’t violate strict moral standards of what they’re displaying to the reader. Doing the same when you have a teen involved in yours might give you a good baseline. Any of the Thoene clan are usually good authors, for instance. Good authors as in ones who can actually write a great read. T. Davis Bunn and Frank Peretti are also high quality authors. On the romance side, my mom likes Jan Karon. I’ve not read any of them since I’m not big on romance as a main book component, but a number of her friends like them too.

I would put one point to you, because of a phrase you used that’s often used. Legislating morality. All laws legislate morality. Even murder and rape laws. Male lions, for instance, see nothing wrong with killing other male lions and all their offspring in order to mate with their females. This is normal animal behavior. Human beings limit such behavior on the basis of our morality, which is usually religious in origin even if inherited by non-religious people. See also the Muslim militias in Darfur who follow the lion-style practice, murdering the males of Christians and animists in southern Sudan and taking their women and daughters forcibly as wives or sex slaves.

People who use the phrase “legislating morality” really mean “establishing laws based on a moral code other than mine that would restrict my desired behaviors.” Picking marriage as an issue since you mentioned it, both permitting homosexuals to marry and forbidding homosexuals to marry are moral judgements. The only law that might qualify as not legislating one morality or the other would be to eliminate all legal recognition of any such state as marriage existing since that would be a law which made no moral judgement on who could pair with who. of course, it would in turn throw the entire legal system into chaos, since inheritance laws, medical say-so rights, property laws, children’s citizenship, and even provisions on not being forced to testify against your spouse are all tied to marriage (which itself is religious/moral rather than governmental in origin, with the original governmental laws in each place being based on the religious and social practices already in the area when the law was made). Either way, any law that either approves or denies homosexual (or poly) marriages is a legislation of one side or the other’s morality. I’d really like to see people realize that and reframe the debate.

I’ve had to explain to friends a few times how I can vote for opposite sides, from the local council to State level and back again for National elections. Different matters require different approaches, and nobody can always be correct.

Hope it works out for you Silk!