Why not just get rid of marriage?

Yesterday, as most everyone seemed to expect, the California Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of last November's anti-gay-marriage Proposition 8. Feminist Law Professors cross-posted Katherine Frank's interesting analysis of Marriage in California After Strauss v. Horton, which also appeared on the Gender & Sexuality Law Blog. On this second blog, after a bit of exploration, I found a wonderful post from the same author which argued that it would make the most sense for the California Supreme Court to disestablish marriage.

So is marriage more than a word?  Did the justices of the California Supreme Court simply not “get it” when they asked why Prop 8 didn’t just deny same sex couples a word, a label, the nomenclature of marriage? The plaintiffs in the Prop 8 case insisted that the fight is not simply over a word.  It is a fight for dignity and respect.  They claim and indeed insist that denying the label marriage to the unions of same sex couples is an insult, a degradation, and a dignity harm.  Yet to do so is to take for granted that marriage is something sacred, something to be honored and something that dignifies those who earn its blessings.  It is to argue from within a normative universe whose values you take for granted and embrace.  And it is to base your legal arguments on the legitimacy of those values - the recognition of the harm alleged in the Prop 8 case depends on it.

Hear, hear.