The law in Lebanon recognizes eighteen religious t?’ifa (“sects”) as moral persons. It also consigns personal status and family laws under their full jurisdiction. Each t?’ifa thus applies its private laws in its own courts. Personal status and family laws remain outside the jurisdiction of civil courts. In 1997-1998, the President of the Republic proposed a draft law, known as “The Optional Civil Marriage Law”, which would open up a civil legal space for those who choose to manage their conjugal affairs outside t?’ifa jurisdictions. The proposal launched a polemic pitting supporters and opponents against each other for the duration of four months. Those who opposed the draft proposal were the Muslim and Christian religious authorities. It is tempting to see in this event a typical case of religious figures and institutions intervening in public affairs – it is not an unusual sight in Lebanon after all. It would be too hasty, however, to dismiss this as representing a frustrating failure of secularism. This paper analyzes the discourses that opposed civil marriage, and proposes instead that, contrary to our initial judgments, these discourses are articulations of a distinctive secularism. Indeed, when examined closely, they appear to be the discourses of secular citizens. A close reading of the Sunni, Shi’i, Druze and Catholic Maronite discourses during the polemic reveals that each inflects the relationship between religion and the state in unique ways. Yet, a crucial element in this is the relationships among them, indicated by secular concepts such as t?’ifa, civil society, citizenship, security and consensus, in other words, by confirming their social contract. This suggests also that what is often called sectarianism in Lebanon is actually the exercise of a secular citizenship. One reason for this is that any public discourse is inevitably shaped by the fact that it is public. I thus intentionally use material collected from two of the most widely read newspapers in Lebanon to see how the structuring of a public event by the mass media is constitutive of the secular. I present a detailed analysis of the discourses as they appeared in the two newspapers. I trace their development from their initial genesis to their termination four months later. I analyze carefully the language that articulates their relationship to each other and to the state. This task is supported by fourteen months of field research conducted in Lebanon for a doctoral dissertation in cultural anthropology.