Political Humor

I'm sorry, but you are wrong.

Marriage isn't (just) a religius act. It's a civil one.

Marriage didn't start as religious. Rather, it was appropriated by religion. That's mostly a product of the fact that for a large part of recent(ish) history states had official religions which served to keep the population docile. We seem to have returned to that ideal as of recently as well.

The difference between "marriage" and "domestic partnership" when domestic partherships as such were introduced was the fact that for marriage you had to get married (i.e. go to the wedding registrar and get yourselves on the list), as opposed to domestic partnerships which were meant as a "marriage without marriage". In ages long past, bastard children had no rights of inheritance. That changed and they were treated equal. Domestic partherships likewise allowed spouses the "benefits" of marriage such as tax breaks, divorces, domestic violence protection/suits, etc.

Today, for some odd reason, you have to file for domestic partnership. That's like requiring children file for citizenship. Sure, you do have to report the child as born, but if someone finds out they should have citizenship according to the rules, after a bit of bureaucracy they should have it. It's an automatic process. You don't enter a civil partnership by filing for one. When a spouse sues the other the courts decide whether their relationship constitutes a partnership. So it's a status aforded automatically, not unlike citizenship (until Trump trumps that, at least).

Again, religions don't own a monopoly on marriage. States have been marrying people quite literally since time immemorial. They've been conflated with religion because then there used to be a state-enforced official religion, which the US (and many other places) seem to have returned to.

What we should do is treat marriages as secular. Religions have their visions of marriage. Why shouldn't the state have its own?

Treat marriage as what it is: a registered domestic partnership with the appropriate name of "marriage".

If you want to legally get married, go to the registrar and register.

If you want to get married in your religion of choice, great! Go to their version of priests. Civil recognition of the marriage may or may not be automatic, and there are a few ways how that might be done.

TLDR: Religion has no monopoly on the word or concept of "marriage", as it predates all of them. Just look at roman marriages - done before Christianity was even a thing.