Slippery Slope for Marraige

Check out this post from NRO. It brings up the subject of Polyandry (and it links to a post from the blogfaddah, but it's not as thoughtful, so therefore, not as relevant, but you should follow the link anyway.)

Personally, I don't think we'll get so far down the road that the government provides multiple partner-marriage certificates. I don't exactly have a problem with government-sponsored polygamy, in that I don't think it would be any worse than just polygamy (or, rather as KJL rightly corrects, polyandry).
I feel that the government shouldn't discriminate. Therefore, if we're going to have marriage certificates, we should make sure that all parts of the citizenry are eligible to get them. However, I don't think we should just make gay marriage (or any of the other things we're talking about) legal.
The knot in the issue is that, if we make it government supported, then priests (or any official who can marry people) who don't want to marry homosexual couples, will have to at least fill out the paperwork for them to be married. I don't think we'll be able to force the priests to do the whole ceremony, but I do think that people would cry "Discrimination" if they refused to do the paperwork. I don't think we should force anyone to compromise his or her beliefs in that way.
Here is my solution. Lets give marriage back to the people who invented it. I'm sort of referring specifically to the church here, however, I know that other cultures came up with male-female cohabitation rituals (along with others) as well, and my point works for everyone. Let's get the government out of the picture on this. If there was any issue where the government was superfluous, it's this one. The certificate doesn't really do anything. It lets you file jointly for taxes, and sometimes pay more money. It lets you get health benefits from work, but most companies already have committed relationships clauses or something similar that could still apply. It lets you visit your spouse in the hospital, but we could do that just as easily by having everyone write a permission note that they could give to their loved ones that would allow them to visit. Other than that, there isn't much.
These benefits are already given to people who have civil-unions. However, they appear not to have appeased the homosexual/whatever-I'm-supposed-to-call-it-now community. The reason for this is simple. A civil union does not grant the social respect that marriage does in our society. I have a news flash for you: the government sanction will not change this!
What I propose is this. Lets get the government completely out of the loop, as far as marriage goes. Let's let churches decide who they want to give marriage ceremonies to. And lets let civic groups decide as well. People could then use whoever they wanted to marry them...even their best friend Bob. The churches that are comfortable giving marriages to homosexuals will be allowed to, and the churches that are not, won't have to. The people who don't want to get married in the church can go ask their best friend Bob to provide the ceremony, if they feel they need one. And no one would be able to complain that they are treated differently with taxes, or hospital visitation, since everyone would be on the same page. The community respect for marriage would not change, and some groups would be less respected than others, but this is already the case (what do you think about the marriages that happen in Las Vegas?) so it won't change anything substantial.
Also, the system, as it currently stands, discriminates against single people. If the government doesn't grant special privileges to married people, then it can't continue to discriminate against singles.
If this post doesn't make sense, well, tough. But tell me, and I'll re-phrase. Maybe I'll even edit it a bit...but that's not exactly blogging.

Update: The links I put up top no longer seem to be working, or even appearing. I've come to the conclusion that they died, or I forgot to create them in the first place...errr, sorry. I've gone to the trouble of rounding up some of them, but the others seem to be lost in the sands of time...

Check out Instapundit here and here