Getting it rite

Another corollary to the axiom, "A committed life-long relation between two people of the same sex is the moral equivalent of a heterosexual marriage" is (in case I haven't mentioned it before)
A committed life-long relation between two people of the same sex deserves all the recognition and support from both church and state that a heterosexual marriage does.
That is, the state ought to give out marriage licenses to such couples and the church ought to solemnize, bless and proclaim their union. (I would add that the state ought to have rules for divorces for such couples and the church ought to devise rites for the dissolution of all unions, but that is another issue.)

To review the reasons in favor of taking up these obligations, simple equality aside:
The state gets information which will simplify questions about rights and responsibilities of property and the course of public health threats as well as increasing the societal bend toward stability. In short, just the reasons for licensing and recording heterosexual marriages.

The church also have exactly the same reasons for proclaiming and blessing these relations as it has for heterosexual marriages: supporting the stability of the family, channeling desires, and providing temporal images of God's love.

And what can be put up in opposition to these actions of church and state?

They legalize, even bless, sin!

Well, even assuming homosexual sex acts are sinful (oh dear, there's another topic to look at), they are already legal (that is, decriminalized -- finally, but somehow still insultingly). Indeed, states are coming more and more to the realization that criminalizing sin per se is a bad, unproductive, idea -- quite aside from any notion of separation between church (the spotter of sin) and state (the spotter of crime). There are overlaps, of course, but the sins that are also crimes should be outlawed for their criminal (they muck up property transactions), not their religious (they piss God off), content. And, of course, the state doesn't license the sex -- if any -- in a marriage, only the union (and the accompanying property rights and duties -- all the state can deal with, after all.) The same applies to churches, who do not bless the sex acts in a marriage, but the union itself. While sex acts may be presumed to be a part of a marriage, they are not singled out for special consideration.

Well, even if they don't license or bless homosexual sex acts, these actions would provide secure place to carry them out and thus increase their frequency.

How much did the spread of marriage laws and marriage rites increase the amount of heterosexual sex acts in olden times? Or, if that is too speculative, how much has the decline in marriage in modern times decreased the amount of sexual activity? The effect is surely negligible, even if you don't think post hoc ergo propter hoc is a fallacy. And why, exactly, would increased frequency, did it occur, be a bad thing? If the issue is increased sin and damnation, then we need to look again at Paul, who, after all those passages apparently about how awful homosexual desires and actions are, always comes back to the Good News that all of that (and other things also in the tirade) is vanished in the salvific action of Jesus. So, unless you think seventy times seven is a literal limit on the number of times one can be forgiven for something (in which case, you have less than a year and a half before damnation overtakes you) rather than a symbolic way of saying "as long as he asks," a Christian homosexual (and this is not an oxymoron, by this same reasoning) does not fall deeper into sin and damnation at all.
(Note: this not urging increased sin so that grace may increase, but merely noting that, if it were sin, grace would be sufficient to cover it.)

Well, even if it doesn't legitimate sin, it does legitimate an unhealthy life-style.

I guess I never understood what the gay life-style was, because, with some few flaming exceptions -- easily matched from straight culture, though in somewhat different form -- the lives of the gays I know or hear about do not seem that different from anybody else's: drag out of bed, slog off to work, drag home, watch tv, sleep. I tend to think, then, that "lifestyle" is again a code for "sex act". So, then, are homosexual sex acts more unhealthy than heterosexual ones (presumably meaning heterosexual ones that homosexuals don't engage in, since most homosexual sex acts are also heterosexual ones, with insignificant -- from a health point of view -- modifications). I suppose that each sex act carries unique risks and, if that danger is realized and the act is stigmatized, proper treatment might be delayed and unhealthy consequences ensue. But then, legitimating the context of the act would go some way toward removing the stigma and the delay in treatment, hence, hopefully, the bad outcome. Yet another way in which marriage is a healthy choice.

So, I see no rational reason against marriage for all couples, and several reasons in favor of it -- for both church and state. All that is left against it is the ick factor, which is no ground for such an important choice.