Sacred <> Profane
Secular is an antonym for sacred. So is profane. It is a logical fallacy to draw the conclusion that secular is therefore the same as profane. And yet, that is exactly the argument constantly being made against gay marriage. Bill Frist called marriage a sacrament. George Bush has called marriage a sacred institution. Sacred and sacrament are the realm of religion. Government has no business officiating in either one. At least some on the right have noticed this potential land mine. Mitt Romney, the governor of Massachusetts, called marriage "a special institution," avoiding any religious overtones whatsoever. However, if you pull religion out of the argument, the whole thing collapses like a house of cards. "Protect marriage!" is the rallying cry from the right. Their fight, however, has little to do with protecting marriage. "Protect marriage" is simply a more palatable slogan than "Down with fags!"
The concept of civil marriage has been around for quite some time. The need was obvious. Couples from mixed religious backgrounds, a Jew and a Catholic for example, often found themselves without a religious community willing to sanction their union. They still do. And yet, no one is proposing an amendment to prevent this heretical union from being acknowledged by the state. The need for civil marriage (dare I call it a civil union?) was actually guided more by the philosophical creeds of the founding fathers than a philanthropic desire to provide equal access to government protections to couples estranged from their religious traditions. Indeed, the founding fathers made it quite clear that government and religion make poor bed fellows. In her most recent column regarding the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling, Ann Coulter informs us that the author of the Massachusetts constitution, John Adams, was a very religious man. Somehow she draws the conclusion that any man who advocates the "duty of all men in society, publicly and at stated seasons, to worship the Supreme Being, the great Creator and Preserver of the universe," must be a Christian and would therefore be appalled that "his" constitution was found by a modern court to allow gays the right to marry.
In fact, the opposite is more likely. John Adams, like his good friend Thomas Jefferson, had little use for religion. Each believed in a God, a Creator, but neither was Christian. Thomas Jefferson did not believe that God had any active interest in the affairs of men. Jesus Christ he acknowledged as a great teacher. The rest, as far as Thomas Jefferson was concerned, was mere superstition. Indeed Thomas Jefferson believed religion corrupt, manipulating men's passions to what he saw as violent ends. Both men regarded the intellect and reason, man's ability to think for himself, as God's greatest gift to man. It is much more likely that John Adams would be delighted at the application of reason and the disregard of religious tradition in the court decision.
Christianity is certainly the dominant religion in America today. Many use this fact to call us a Christian nation. I would be willing to bet that most, if not all, of the Founding Fathers would find such a statement appalling. Indeed, the Treaty of Tripoli, signed by John Adams and ratified by Congress in 1797, states "...the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion..." America was founded as a haven for religious freedom. The idea that a particular religious creed should hold sway over the direction of the country at large is completely at odds with the ideals and beliefs of the Founding Fathers, and is, in fact, an insult to their vision.
Many religious traditions in the United States view the Constitution as a document inspired of God. I doubt the Founding Fathers would take exception to that view. Their God, however, was much more all encompassing than the God of any particular religious creed. Perhaps that is why George Washington, when he did attend church at all, rarely did so at the same congregation twice in a row. For these men, secular was sacred. For these men, the freedom of each man to understand God through his own thought, feeling and intellect was the only true way to be spiritual. For them Christianity was but a subset of the Divine. That today's Christian Americans have coopted their ideals and called them Christian, would, I think, offend most of them to the core.