Property rights, legal authority issues, what have you could all be handled by any one of a dozen forms of contractual relationship. And that relationship could be celebrated, indeed even sanctified, in dozens of ways, none of which have anything to do with marriage.

But the word “marriage” has some legal leverage in the welfare state money game that a new term would not.

Socially speaking, our “Everything is in the eye of the beholder” cultural mindset has completely lost sight of the fundamental, non-religious and eminently practical reason for making marriage a culturally and legally special relationship: i.e. men and women are different — and women, because of childbirth, are vulnerable in ways that men are not. Hence some special arrangements are required as this is really really NOT a relation between partners who are perfectly, … um, how do I say this? … equal? identical? … oh what the hey, you get my point.

Homosexual couples have no such issues to resolve and no inequalities to compensate for or protect against. But in today’s America this is somehow not universally obvious.