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What say you?
Marriage is between a man and a woman and God. The state has no right to be in the marriage business. In fact, until the mid 1800's, there was no such thing as a marriage license. The state instituted marriage licenses to keep Whites from marrying Blacks or other races. Just another "benefit" of those doggone Jim Crow laws.
Mike
I wholeheartedly agree with you. When I was married the first time, the State of West Virginia required that we both take a blood test. I learned many years later that the test was for syphilis, which explains why the doctor gave me a funny look when I asked “well, Doc, did I pass?” The second time I got married, in Alabama, the minister, who was a family friend from another state, was fixated on whether we had obtained a license. Of course, it would have been illegal for him to pronounce us man and wife had we not obtained the license. As a lover of liberty I find it absurd that we, a free people, will tolerate the condition that no one can marry without permission from the state.
When you say 'traditional marriage', that would be according to whom?
In looking at marriage as being a matter of religion and not government, we mustn't forget that not all religions equally recognize marriage as sacred, such as Buddhism (coincidentally, my wife is a Buddhist) where it is considered a personal and individual concern. And instead of divorce, some religions or clan cultures recognized polygyny as a viable 'solution' to concrete issues such as infertility or providing means of support to widows in the absence of a welfare state, among other things. In our welfare state, it became convenient to just 'throw' an infertile woman away or even an over-fertile woman where the children become too much of a burden to support, so dump them on the state.
In fact, it was an act of Congress with the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act that struck the first blow at that level in furthering the persecutions of Mormons by attacking their practice of polygany, but did that law account for support of widows? Perhaps indirectly to some extent in that it also limited church holdings in territories to $50k which may have freed up monetary support for charity. But the fact remains, it was an act of Congress to subject the practitioners of one religion to the views and 'traditional' practices of others, which some may argue is in violation of the Constitution. The SCOTUS used a slippery slope argument in that if they allowed Mormons to practice polygyny, then would that prevent them from preventing other religions from practicing human sacrifice. Well, I would think that's aptly covered under murder laws, and are we to say because they have authority to legislate there that they can also legislate rules of marriage in the traditional sense of one religious group over that of another? Are they even on the same level?
I can't see taking licensing away from the state. Does it really matter who the individual states certify as 'legal' co-habitants in their licensing scheme? Arguably, that's all it really is (outside the sacrament of religion), a contract and a legal vehicle (in both secular and religious societies) to determine division of assets upon dissolvement of the union for whatever reason or establishing rights of inheritance should one pass without a will, among other things which are under the jurisdiction of the state vs that of the church. If anything, it helps keep lawyers from stealing a good portion of one's estate from the immediate family, and the more crap we can keep out of the courts and away from lawyers to me is a damn good thing.