Andrew Sullivan offered a suggestion to the pro-gay marriage camp, inspired by New Hampshire’s recently signed legislation, that they explicitly allow clergy to refuse to perform a marriage which is against their religious convictions. He ended the post with this:

I propose that any initiative wording in a future California ballot specifically include a religious exemption. It shows we are serious about religious freedom and a church-state divide.

I have an idea that would show that people are serious about a church-state divide: don’t let clergy marry people at all.

Obviously, they can perform ceremonies which are respected and honoured within the confines of their faith. But if you’d prefer to be married in the eyes of the law, and not the Lord, have it done by government officials. Then go have your religious ceremony, should your preacher condone the type of personal relationship you’ve committed yourself to. To have a situation where religious leaders are explicitly involved in a government process seems to me a much greater disregard for the division of church and state.

The talk about gay marriage recently has been important because gay rights are the next big barrier for civil equality. But even serious issues can be fun. GraphJam had an interesting analysis of the consequences of gay marriage earlier this week, and now a database engineer has chimed in with his views both on gay marriage and how to properly represent it in databases. It requires some basic knowledge of databases but even if you don’t even know what a database is, I think you’ll get the gist. He begins with some fairly simple concepts, which only support simple heterosexual marriage, and through 14 different revisions of the database schema — dealing with issues ranging from homosexuality, to transgendered people, to polygamy — develops a pretty out there format for storing a barely recognizable form of marriage. When introducing his final revision here’s what he has to say:

The legal ramifications of what I’m about to describe are unguessable. I have no idea what rights a civil union like the ones which would be possible below would have, nor do I have any idea what kind of transhuman universe would require so complex a system. This is the marriage database schema to take us up to the thirty-first century, people.

I’m all for it. Marriage as an emotional commitment is a fairly novel concept anyways, so changing it to be even more accepting is a good thing. And the more you think about the arbitrary limitations we’ve placed on marriage and other cultural ideals by virtue of nothing more that historical inertia, the more you’ll be willing to understand, accept, and support it.