What's government's interest in outlawing homosexual marriage?

I have mixed feelings.

On the one hand, gays are tax-paying citizens and are due a citizen's rights. Long-term gay couples ought to have some property rights, inheritance rights, and other legal protections that long-term straight couples do. A civil union document by a Justice of the Peace seems appropriate for that.

But, on the other hand, marriage is a institution that has been around for milillenia and has long been recognized as affirming the union between a man and a woman and legitimizing the children that result thereof. Marriage is very much a religious institution, not just a legal status. Gays have no right, in my opinion, to usurp the term marriage and apply it to the civil unions they are no doubt constitutionally entitled to. Religious groups who hold marriage sacred should not be forced by a government to accept conditions that violate their beliefs.

I say, of course give the gays equal rights under the law. Legal arrangements can be made for community property, alimony, and similar issues for gay couples. It makes divorces orderly in a legal sense and doesn't hurt anybody that I can see.

But it ain't marriage. Marriage is a clearly understood institution that not only enjoys these legal rights, but is also a major component of religious faiths, procreation of children, and the essential family structure as modern human beings know it.

I know the issue is more complex than these simple statements, but I think this thing must go down two paths. One -- Traditional marriage for heterosexual couples remains as it has always been. Two -- some kind of legal arrangements for gay couples that preserves their constitutional rights but does not resemble marriage in a religious, moral, or anthropological sense.

I don't care if they call it civil union, homospousal rights, contractual roomates, or Maggies drawers. Just don't call it gay marriage.

You can personally discriminate against gays because of your religious prejudice if you choose to do so. But the law should not. Gays do not rate special privilege, nor do they rate special discrimination.

The only problem I have with gays are the institution of "Hate Crimes". A crime is a crime and the murder of a homosexual is no more heinous than the murder of anybody else. Just my opinion.