Differing with Dean, I'll point out that "the difference" is not that "some pretty religious people" are freaked out by gay marriage, but that marriage should be left left as defined by religious doctrines over the years (now, if someone wants to point out vagaries and inconsistencies on this point, go nuts ... I have to limit the amount of time I devote to a few things here and there, so I'll spare the reader a discourse on amateur theology). The delineation that might be made is something like "Well, what about a justice of the peace wedding? There's nothing strictly religious about a legal wedding as its defined by law, anyway." Fair enough. But to the extent that it is covered by law, and even non-believers are allowed to engage in this practice, I would argue two things.
One - much of what is written in law is based on religious doctrine (thou shalt not kill ... remember that one?). This firewall we occassionally imagine between religion and state is sometimes too starkly drawn by those freaked out by the religious right. That marriage is codified does not remove it from religious terms. But that the state recognizes a religious ceremony for a wedding indicates a devotion to at least some of our better traditions.
Two - non-believers certainly get a free pass and sometimes that's the fault of the couple, and sometimes the fault of the church. How many of us have friends that have had a church wedding in a church they've never been to? To be sure, non-believers would, if they were more consistent with their beliefs, join in a heterosexual version of civil unions. In fact, one might suggest that commonlaw marriages are effectively similar in many ways (again, I leave the particulars to the diehards).
It really bugs me that the president is backing amending the constitution to prevent whack job judges from legislating gay marriage. Yeah, I think that the mayor of San Franscisco and the supremes in Massachusetts are way out of line, but what else is new? This is the classic case of the cure being worse than the disease. You don't mess with the constitution for this. No good will come from it.
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