Why does everything have to be "yes" or "no"?

It interesting, have you noticed that most anything that is controversial has to have a "yes" or "no" answer? Well, at least as far as anyone invested in those issues feel. It's always a demand of "are you for it, or against it? Yes or no?"

I feel this prevents us from coming to any real solution on these matters, which is what, in turn, makes them controversial.

What got me thinking about this was when someone asked me my stance on Gay Marriage. "Yes or No"?

Me, I say neither. Here is my point of view, you don't have to agree with it, but this is my blog so I'm going to put it up anyways. :) This is a cut and paste of an email correspondence that I had recently and here is my explanation of my stance.

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Basically I feel that Marriage was originally a religious institution and as time has passed governments have decided to sanction it for various reasons.

While Marriage is good in my opinion I feel that Government really has no place saying who can and who cannot be a part of it, being that it was originally (and still continues to be in many ways) a religious institution. Whereas if they wanted to sanction any legal union I would have no issue with that because legal unions are strictly legal and not religious in the least. I would have no problem with them declaring my marriage a "Legal Union" for their purposes and then leaving it up to me and my religion to decided if I wanted to then have a "marriage". Therefore making "Legal Unions" the legal and "Marriage" the religious.

I feel that this would resolve a lot of the conflict between the two. The Government and religion would be separate (as I feel they always should have been, the governments should never have had their legal terminology be "marriage", it's too much a religious term, I feel that was a mistake). The government would have it's term and the religious their term.

As far as homosexual relationships go the government could sanction all they want to, giving legal rights to those partnerships, religions would have no reason to have ANY say in the matter, and if that partnership wants to be "married" they can take it up with their individual congregations or religious leadership. Some religions would sanction it and some would not, As I'm sure that many religions are on various sides of any controversial subject.

I also feel that the government could then sanction relationships that are wholly platonic as well. Such as two widowed sisters who live together. If one sister dies why shouldn't the other have stake in that sisters assets? Such as the house that they share? If one sister becomes gravely ill shouldn't the other have some stake in decisions being made? Of course this would be a voluntary agreement that would only happen if those two sisters decided that that would be the best course of action.

Basically I advocate complete separation of church and state on this issue.