Let's face it: Most of the problems stem from the word marriage. The state should not define what a marriage is - that's what I always hear.
Fine.
Go give "marriage" to the church alone and the state gives an "partnership".
Marriage is a purely privately, religious thing. It isn't written down in any state document and doesn't come with a name change. A partnership does. All tax advantages go only to the partnership.
Shop owners can refuse service if two homosexuals are married, but not if they are in a partnership.
Except homophobic religions aren't the only religions, there are plenty of gay Christians, and marriage has been a legal institution that non-religious, straight people have been doing for ages.
So if marriage, as it exists today were fundamentally religious, and all religions were against gay marriage, then that might be a different matter, but it isn't and they aren't.
My husband is atheist and marriage means a lot to him. My church is Christian and is staunchly pro-gay-marriage. One of my church friends is a bishop in a US Christian church, and she's gay.
Christianity isn't against gay marriage, some Christian organizations have decided that this is a BIG problem that they need to take issue with, disproportionate to countless other stuff in the Bible that they could decide people are doing "wrong."
I mean, man, DH's family is staunchly Catholic and the majority of them are divorced. His mother's generation are in their 80s/90s and 5/6 of them got divorced and remarried. Most of their kids have been divorced and remarried, and yet they're all still active members of their church in their little rural community.
Churches decide what to make a big deal of what not to make a big deal of. Each organization decides when to invoke Jesus' forgiveness and God's condemnation based on their own agenda.
It's funny, in my group of religious leaders that I meet with regularly, one of the things I am constantly doing is reminding them to have compassion and love for homophobic, bigoted Christian leaders. I remind them constantly that they too are political and have a political agenda and their interpretations are just as human as those with whom they disagree.
They are so frustrated and can get so condemning and hateful of bigoted Christian leaders, I have to remind them that they aren't actually allowed to engage in righteous hate in Jesus name, that it's hypocritical. They can engage in human anger and judgement, but they can't claim that their hate is holy while bigoted hate is evil.
I'm the most junior member of this group, so I piss them off...often. But I refuse to swallow any religious hypocrisy that a leader can speak hate against people while claiming to promote universal love. I'm not into that double speak.
Point being, all churches are political entities, run by people with human agendas. The Bible doesn't dictate what they support and hate, they decide what they support and hate and the bible is used as the "bullet proof vest" that they believe gives them righteous cover. Except that the other side is using the same Bible for the opposite stance, and their quote-game is just as good.
It's not as simple as saying: "oh just let the bigots have their bigotry, just rename marriage and it won't hurt anyone"