I think such an arrangement would work, Kevin, if it were quietly implemented; in fact another approach would be to have all State approvals be civil partnership, and leave the term Marriage to the churches.

At present, of course, the storm has been built already on the semantic underpinnings of "marriage", so it might not be acceptable in the face of all the Sturm und Drang PR afoot.

In this country, also, there is a strong negative connotation to policies of "separate but equal", which for many years was used to justify extreme segregationist discrimination in the South in particular. So even though the policy might make sense, it could easily get swamped by PR backlash.


A