Rejecting legal marriage

Well, this is not what I intended to post first, but its intriguing nonetheless. I am not particularly interested in this woman's story, though it is a powerful one. But rather my attention is caught by the mentioning of "nonpartisan" in the the last paragraph. It seems that to belong to a party undermines ones opinion as one instantly makes her identity synonymus with media figure heads.
Also of note it the issue of no-fault divorce and its implications in the gay-rights/civil unions/sanctity of marriage debates. A group of us have been discussing of late the idea of revoking the state's power to grant marriage licenses and returning the power of marriage to the religious domain. It the pro-offered model civil unions are obtain by anyone who wants them while marriage returns the the role of religious sacrament administrated by a church, temple etc. Here we make legal contract a separate function. One can have a civil union (a legal document entailing spousal rights, including the hotly debated power of attorney), a marriage (religious vows), both, or neither. I am personally interested in the idea of only obtaining a religious marriage as a statement of autonomy from a moralistic state. At present our family structure its a terrible melting pot of church and state, and the whole debate about gay rights would be much simplified if we could give every legal resident the equal right to civilly unite themselves with any other legal resident. Which makes me wonder, why haven't members of the gay community started drawing up private contracts giving one another power of attorney etc? While this would not alleviate issues of taxation and insurance, perhaps it could mitigate the circumstances in a post-Prop 8 world?