> Call the new thing what you want: around here it is something like "civil marriage" as opposed to "(implicit: religious) marriage".
I think the major problem here is that most conservative Christians who propose it still want “religious marriage” to count as a “civil marriage.” Fundamentally separating the two isn’t actually a bad idea in my opinion, but in practice it seems like most people who suggested it (from the conservative side of things) didn’t actually want that. They wanted “separate but equal” in a sense, and they also didn’t particularly care if it actually happened or not - it was a delaying tactic here in the US.
There's usually no problem with a religious marriage counting as a civil marriage, except for edge cases like religions who accepts polygamy etc since all the rules that are needed for civil marriage (and more) are typically also required by mainstream religions.
And religions mostly have no problem with civil marriage as long as nobody forces them to bless it. Exceptions: I guess WBC and a few others.
I mean, for starters it’s a little insulting for people to say “Oh no, you can’t have marriage. Let’s go create a new kind of marriage and that’ll be the same thing.” To know that not only do they not want to bless it, they want to not even have it called the same name is just really a slap in the face, as far as bargaining chips go. Why settle for an insult?
But it’s not even just that - if the US religious right had honestly been fine with that, then why didn’t that come to pass? That would have been a much easier thing to do than to fight marriage equality tooth and nail at every turn. The fact that they didn’t really support this obvious easy way out is very telling.
Why are we pretending like the ones asking for the rights didn’t take some obvious logical, alternate path? LGBT folks largely supported “civil unions” which were explicitly unequal, doesn’t it stand to reason they would have supported something far more equal? The answer is that LGBT people weren’t the ones refusing to take some higher road here.
I think the major problem here is that most conservative Christians who propose it still want “religious marriage” to count as a “civil marriage.” Fundamentally separating the two isn’t actually a bad idea in my opinion, but in practice it seems like most people who suggested it (from the conservative side of things) didn’t actually want that. They wanted “separate but equal” in a sense, and they also didn’t particularly care if it actually happened or not - it was a delaying tactic here in the US.