Civil registries will keep peace in marriage war.

Byline: GUEST VIEWPOINT By Robert Friedman For The Register-Guard

With a court ruling in Massachusetts, a mayor's order in San Francisco, a county board's decision in Portland and President Bush's call for a constitutional amendment to prohibit same-sex marriages, the nation confronts a most troublesome problem - and potentially a horribly divisive one.

And yet, the controversy allows for relatively easy resolution by people of good will.

The difficulty stems from the fact that marriage in our culture is essentially a sacred - that is, religious - ceremony that creates a union that we deem to be blessed by God. In point of fact, by issuing a marriage license, the state violates the separation of church and state.

The United States has no state religion as does, for instance, England. Neither is the United States a religious state as is, for instance, Iran, which holds that it is an Islamic nation.

The matter of qualifying for marriage ought to be left to those agencies that unite couples in ceremonies under what they deem as God's blessing: churches, synagogues, mosques, etc.

In place of issuing marriage licenses, the state should institute a registry of civil union to which any two (same- or opposite-sex) persons of legal age can come to formalize legally a continuing commitment to each other and their mutual welfare. In entering the registry, they are accorded all those civil rights now reserved only for those couples in our traditional, religiously based unions.

If same-sex couples wish to be married, and thus benefit from what they may perceive as God's blessing of their commitment, let them seek a religious institution that shares their view and will perform such a ceremony. Absent that, they may join with like-minded persons (as all existing denominations historically have done) and form a church of their own.

Opposite-sex couples who marry to receive God's blessing of their union will want to enter the registry of civil union to be accorded the civil rights assured its registrants.

As members of our society know well, both opposite-sex and same-sex commitments can have their problems, problems that destroy those earlier and earnest senses of union.

Under the proposed system, religious institutions that marry people could do as they please about divorce. Couples seeking removal from the registry of civil unions would go to the courts for equitable and legal dissolution of their union.

After many court cases, much anger at each step along the way and untold residual animosity, something resembling what is proposed here will come into being.

On the other hand, with a bit of give and take and a healthy portion of good will toward our fellow human beings of whatever sexuality, we might just be able to avoid another uncivil war in our land.

Robert Friedman of Eugene is a professor emeritus at the University of Oregon, where he taught speech.