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Once again, if this were baptism we were talking about I think you'd understand better why the church is upset over this.

And conversely, if baptism conferred special legal and societal rights beyond those entirely internal to the church, then I hope you could understand why we atheists would want that disestablished just as marriage has been...

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I realize there's disagreement over whether the concept of marriage originated with the church, but while that question is open it can't be as simple as, "the church has no say because the state owns the concept of marriage."

Marriage is documentedly well-established in the Code of Hammurabi, before either Judaism or Christianity originated. I don't see any room for disagreement there except from the "Scripture is correct and therefore any conflicting archaeology is incorrect" crowd.

Peter