"The fact that you can't sell your daughter for three goats and a cow means we have already redefined marriage," or so a saying goes that's been making the rounds on the internet. And I would tend to agree. We are indeed redefining the legal institution of marriage, although not the sacrament of marriage. One of course is a legal contract, the other is not. Sometimes and in some places, the two are the same. In our country for instance, priests are currently authorized to act as the legal agent of the state and when they "perform a marriage" it is recognized as valid by the state. In other places this is not the case.
In Mexico, for instance, only a civil marriage is recognized as legal. A Church wedding has no legal effect. It is not authorized. You may certainly have a church wedding, but you must also have the civil ceremony for the union to be legally recognized.
I am Catholic. The Church has always taught that marriage is between one man and one woman. People can holler all they want about us being intolerant and narrow minded and having no right, yada yada yada, but I can not see any circumstances in which the Church will change its mind on the issue. Of course, this is our definition of the sacrament of marriage. It appears that we are headed into one of those places and times where the Church's definition of marriage and the State's definition of marriage diverge. Since I am both a Catholic and a citizen of the State, I am being asked to assent to a legal change in the definition of marriage. So what is it that I am being asked to agree to?
The previous model can be stated as follows: marriage is the union of one man and one woman. The new civil definition of marriage that I am being asked to agree to is...? Might it be stated as the union of one _____ and one _____, and the blanks may be filled in with any combination of the words man and woman? I am no lawyer, but from what I have seen, the new marriage laws are limited to providing equality to same sex couples. Is there no provision for unions other than couples?
Might not marriage be redefined as the union of x _____ and x _____, where x is a number from 1 to whatever the market will bear? I am not being facetious here. There are other cultures where the numbers involved are not limited to one. The current President of South Africa has four wives, for example. Will a change in the math be part of the redefinition of civil marriage? And why shouldn't it be?
I also have to wonder whether the list of nouns might not be expanded from just man and woman to include boy and girl? There are certainly precedents for this as well. Mahatma Gandhi was betrothed at age 8 and married at 13. As a society, we already take great care to interfere as little as possible in the sex lives of our children, and take great care to provide them with appropriate contraceptives because "we know they're going to do it anyway," so might it also be appropriate to include them in the marriage discussion?
Now it may well be that the proponents of the redefinition of marriage will never ask for more than the recognition of same sex couples, but then I would have to suggest that such limitations could be construed as narrow and intolerant, denying the basic rights of those who have a different vision of marriage.
For the record, I am leaning more and more to the idea of cutting the idea of marriage loose to see where it goes. Civil marriage, that is. I can foresee something along the lines of the Mexican model -- a clear separation of civil and religious ceremonies. That would leave two clearly defined groups each coupling as they see fit.
Incidentally, I know of no mention of goats and cows in the marriage laws of the Church. I believe that was a civil custom.
Almost everyone who tries to convince me that marriage is a religious institution nudges me toward the position that marriage is a civil construct. Even different religious groups can't agree on when marriage is acceptable. Your proposed solution makes a good deal of sense to me.
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