Rev. Al Sharpton: marriage isn't 'sacred

In a Huffington Post column praising NBA player Jason Collins for coming out as gay, MSNBC's Al Sharpton challenged the widely-held belief that marriage is a religiously-based institution.

Sharpton writes:

Many of my fellow members of the Church think that marriage is sacred between a man and a woman according to the Bible, but if that's the basis, then why do we allow secular judges to conduct marriage when we don't know what the judge's personal beliefs are, if any? Why don't we have Churches issue marriage licenses instead of courts? Why don't Churches conduct divorces, child custody cases for that matter? Why should the Church stop at marriage ceremonies, why not the entire entity of marriage and family? The answer is, we really don't believe that ourselves and we live in a nation where we do have separation of Church and state.

@eScarry