On Friday California’s Supreme Court, in a 4-3 ruling, decided to actually call gay marriage, marriage instead of some other term that means exactly the same thing. Hilarity ensued.

This is part one of three of a series on gay marriage. In this part I explore why marriage is even an issue and why states have the right to decide who can and cannot get married.

• Part One: Why States Can Decide Who Gets Married
• Part Two: Everybody Panic And/Or Celebrate Over Nothing
• Part Three: In Defense of Gay Marriage

I would like to preface this by saying that I believe marriage is a religious institution that has become a de facto part of our government’s legislature. That is to say, traditionally, when people get married they get married in a church, by a religious figure, in a religious ceremony.

If the ceremony and the promise of a lifetime together was all that a marriage entailed, I would completely and unconditionally support a church’s* decision to ban gay marriage. I say this because government has no place in religious matters, and if a church wanted to refuse to minister to a certain group for whatever reason, the first amendment grants them that right.

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Marriage as we know it has evolved well beyond a simple religious institution. The fact is that church is not the only place two people can get married and once married there are legal implications for the union.

These days a person can pretty much get married anywhere they damn well want to. A judge can marry people, Elvis impersonators can marry people, and yes, there are even drive through chapels for those couples that don’t want their food to get cold while they tie the knot.

Once married, the rules change for how government, business, and society deals with you. Names change, your spouse becomes your next of kin, taxes are calculated differently, insurance and pension plans accommodate the change, and the property that once belonged to two people is now held commonly by a single entity.

The sad reality of the situation is that marriage, by virtue of its increasingly secular administration and its legal and financial implications, has lost what little first amendment protection it had and has fallen squarely into legislatable territory.

There is not a single word in the constitution regarding marriage, and where the constitution is mute, the tenth amendment grants states (and the people) the right to govern themselves. In other words, same sex marriage is an issue because marriage as an institution is not protected by the first amendment and states rights are protected by the tenth amendment.

The debate over gay marriage takes two sides: religious conservatives who defend the traditional, moral institution of marriage as outlined by their faith of choice versus those who believe everyone should be treated equally under the law.

This is a unique debate in my mind, because there is a collective acknowledgement that both sides actually have a point. We can see this acknowledgement manifest itself as the concept of a civil union. In civil unions same sex couples are granted all the rights, privileges, and liabilities that any heterosexual couple would be granted.

California allowed civil unions for same sex couples which, effectively, meant gay marriage was a reality – it was just called something else. The California Supreme Court decision Friday did not actually change anything. It simply declared that California law had to call a civil union what it was: marriage.

Stay tuned. In part two of the series, I’ll try and fail to figure out why the California decision is such a ground breaking step for same sex couples.

*I say a church’s decision, because the first amendment would prevent the legislature from creating laws that dictated who religious ceremonies could and could not be administered to.