When marriage is the only option on the table for creating families …

Sorry, but what the heck does that mean? People can “create families” however they want; the question is what the government should call them. Does the fact that the feds characterize me as a “taxpayer” rather than a “schmaxpayer” somehow impinge on my freedom? Nonsense.

Here, marriage is being used as a linguistic Trojan horse, a way for the sacramental to insinuate itself into the secular.

Again: nonsense, and I’ve already explained why.

Yes, we are political animals and linguistic animals and a number of other things. Here, marriage is being used as a linguistic Trojan horse, a way for the sacramental to insinuate itself into the secular.

It’s apparent that the language we use fails to sufficiently distinguish the two institutions. Refusing to clarify the language seems like an insistence on being able to control the content of the other.

I’m sure you believe that decreasing the role of religion, maybe even Catholicism, in peoples lives is going to be “by and large negative”. However, a lot of other folks are going to experience it differently, look at the Quiet Revolution.

How great of an institution can it be if it has to be forced?

Forced?! This is getting a bit ridiculous, don’t you think? Humans are social animals, and as such the ways we understand ourselves and our relationships are essentially bound up with our politics (in the modern sense). Eliminating marriage as a legal classification would therefore have drastic effects on how we live our lives, and I’m willing to bet that those effects would be by and large negative. That’s elementary political science, really.

The culture wars have certainly lead to my frustration with the term. I’m married but feel the term is tainted from the politicization. I’m ready to leave the term at the door of the church. For me, the sacramental institution has already killed the civil one. However, I believe that families are simply something people do. We’re hard wired to create them and will continue to do so regardless of the label we slap on them.

Marriage as a tradition needs to be able to stand on its own. I don’t think little girls are in danger of not dreaming of beautiful dresses and fancy cakes any time soon. Suggesting that marriage, as something other than a religious institution, can’t survive without overt governmental support undercuts the argument for it in the first place. How great of an institution can it be if it has to be forced? If marriage is superior and the other forms fail at providing stable families won’t people freely choose marriage?

How does a civil institution undermine a sacrament?

I feel like I’m repeating myself. If the institution of civil marriage were abolished and the sacramental institution were all that remained, marriage would inevitably – or at least, very, very likely – come to be viewed in the public eye as a peculiar sort of thing that only religious people go in for. As a consequence it’s the institution of marriage simpliciter, in both its sacramental and (now nonexistent) civil versions, that would be undermined.

You, and JL to some extent, seem to be assuming that people would choose a civil union because they are less serious about their commitments, either to each other or to the family that they may or may not create.

No, we don’t. We just think that a change in attitudes toward spouses and children would be among the likely consequences of a change in what marriages are called.

It would be a mistake to assume that people that don’t want the government or the church providing the meaning of their relationships want a relationship with no meaning.

But how is insisting on being called a “civil union” rather than a marriage anything other than a reflection of the desire to have the government (help to) provide the meaning of one’s relationship?!

“And I’m sure that marginal tax rates don’t make any difference to how hard people work, either …”

I hope you don’t expect to have the same earning power as a graduate student in Chemistry or Law. Does that mean you don’t work as hard? You don’t expect as much from yourself as students in other disciplines?

the commonplace institution of civil unions (or whatever they might be called) would undermine the significance of the religious institution of “capital-M Marriage” to a point where it would make very little difference whether one entered into it at all.

You’re blatantly misreading that sentence, which was premised on considering a counterfactual circumstance in which the institution of civil marriage had been abolished altogether. In such a case, yes, the only thing left would be the sacrament, but thankfully that’s not where we are.

I don’t think the flavor of the paper makes a difference.

And I’m sure that marginal tax rates don’t make any difference to how hard people work, either …

Really?
“the commonplace institution of civil unions (or whatever they might be called) would undermine the significance of the religious institution of “capital-M Marriage” to a point where it would make very little difference whether one entered into it at all.”

Let’s be honest.

“So you think that those “other alternatives” would do a better job than marriage at promoting, e.g., familial stability?”
I don’t think the flavor of the paper makes a difference.

“let those countries be the laboratories, not ours.”

?? Marriage is State right? I’m not from New Jersey.