Gay marriage?

I have long been promising myself, and anyone else interested in my views to attempt to think through my confusion on the "debate" over "gay marriage". Two deaths in the family in the past month, my mother and my father-in-law, have meant that I haven't had the time or energy to deliver on that promise.

By way of a place marker for my thinking that opens up the public policy questions is the following observation by Symon Hill in a recent column on the Ekklesia website.

At the Ekklesia thinktank, we have long argued that celebrating marriage and making commitments should be separated from the (arguably less important) process of gaining legal recognition. This would mean that people could carry out ceremonies with personal, social and – if important to them – religious significance, with legal registration being a separate process. This would allow supporters and opponents of same-sex marriage to act on their beliefs, to promote them, to publicise them and to seek to persuade others, without being able to use the law to enforce their views on those who disagree.