What do taxes have to do with getting married? You want the state out of sanctioning marriage and my point is that you can be married without state sanction at any time.
I was identifying a group of people "taxpayers" who generally have rights in the country. You can say adults or citizens or whatever. If someone is paying to support the government they should receieve the same legal protection or benefit as the next guy when it comes our our "sacred institutions."
Tex, many states do not recognize "Common Law" marriages, for instance, my Cousin lived here in Maryland for most of his life, where Common Law marriage is not the law of the land. He moved to the Commonwealth of Virginia where "Common Law" is recognized, after 7 years of living together in VA (I believe) he and his girlfriend decided to split up, she took him to court as if they were married and the judge declared that since he moved to VA with her, all of his belongings became "Community Property" after seven years and the Judge had full power to decide how things should be divided up.
Those are State issues on how they deal with Marriage, But I don't think those laws apply to anything but relationships between a man and a woman and what sacrifices they made to that relationship.
What Gays want is to be "Officially" recognized in legally binding relationships that guarantee them survivorship rights on things like the natural laws of inheritance and SS benefits, I believe that is how this becomes a national issue.
But, like many times before, I could be wrong on this too :-)