Should states just do away with marriage completely?

Nestled into the historic euphoria of Tuesday's mandate-level win (presidency and increases in both houses of Congress) was the 4-state loss banning same-sex marriage or same-sex adoptions, most notably Prop 8 in California. There have been a lot of protests since then and the LGBT community has been galvanized and is organizing well. This issue is also touching heavily on religion as it always does, but particularly also on the separation of church and state, with Church of Latter Day Saints pumping millions into the Yes effort on Prop 8. This effort looks to be a clear violation of their tax-exempt status. The LDS is a 501c3, which, without getting overly detailed is the "non-political" non-profit type, meaning it is not supposed to lobby:

In general, no organization, including a church, may qualify for IRC section 501(c)(3) status if a substantial part of its activities is attempting to influence legislation (commonly known as lobbying).

Source: IRS.

So that's the current state of this divisive issue. It's an issue that, personally, incites quite a bit of anger in me. I don't see what business the state has, at all, in determining the "moral" parameters of marriage. The entire notion is absurd, hateful, stupid, bigoted, and all around assinine. As Lewis Black so eloquently put how absurd this issue is: "surely if we can keep the queers from marrying, all our other problems will go away."

And boy, do we have other problems to be worrying about. The economy, two wars, health care, energy, education, environment, etc. I could probably spend four posts on the thing left out of that list. Yet, here we are again arguing about who is allowed to love, fuck, marry, and have children with whom.

In taking all this in, I had a thought: just have the states ban all marriage. Take the word out of the states' legal lexicons. Only have the states grant civil-unions (or whatever you want to call it), upgrading these legal bindings to the exact same status as is currently granted to marriage, also looping in retro-status: "all rights currently granted by employers and other entities to married couples now apply retroactively to couples in civil unions" (I'm not a lawyer, so I will never get the language right). In short, take the power of the word "marriage" away from the bigots. Take the fight out of the legislatures and courtrooms and move it to the churches where it belongs.

I completely accept that this solution has the following problems:

• It may be legally impossible (I'm not in a position to know, so I'm throwing it out there as an idea).
• It's a symbolic cop-out, basically ceding the power of the word to the bigots.

On the other hand, it would accomplish the following:

• Attain full legal status for the same-sex version of what is currently known as "marriage."
• Take the issue away from the Right in its use as a distraction and wedge tactic.
• Move the issue to the bigots own turf: their churches. It will be a much longer, drawn-out fight there, but will become purely a symbolic fight, rather than the fight for rights as it currently is in the states.

Just an idea.