Getting married is usually a two-fold process. First, you apply at the court house in the county you are going to be married in for a petition to marry. Upon completion of whatever legal rules and regulations that county/state has in place, you are legally married when you sign the marriage certificate in front of someone who can legally marry people in your state. Most clergy leaders are certified to do this. Second, sometimes a church leader will marry you in spiritual accordance of that religion.
Step one or step two can and sometimes does occur independently of each other. Legal marriage is not the same as spiritual marriage. Legal marriage is a binding LEGAL agreement between two parties that unites them financially and legally in the eyes of the law. States vary on the level of binding that occurs. For example, some states have a marital property law stating that anything acquired during the course of a marriage is marital property and if the union is dissolved, then the property is divided equally.
The issue of gay marriage is not a spiritual one. There are religions that will spiritually marry gays and lesbians. The issue is whether or not gays and lesbians should be able to marry from a legal perspective. Should two people of any gender be able to enter the legal binding agreement we call marriage? What if we changed the legal name of marriage to something more legal sounding? Then would Christians argue against it?
Being legally married has its financial advantages, tax-breaks, insurance for spouses, and survivor benefits to name a few. By adding more married people to the tax base, then theoretically we will pay more taxes to make up for the additional tax breaks. By having more married people in your insurance pool at work, you have more people to insure, so your rates will increase. Let me pose this question, exactly how much will this really effect the average person? Very little.
Should our government really be making an amendment to OUR CONSTITUTION that states legal marriage can only exist between a man and a woman? This sounds a little crazy. Our government is supposed to be regulating LEGAL issues, not SPIRITUAL issues. From a legal perspective how can you deny any two people to form a legal bond to each other? We already allow it for most of the people. How can we deny it to a small group? Maybe instead of legalizing gay marriage, we should stop showing favoritism to the Christian concept of marriage and dissolve the legal concept of marriage altogether.