You know, that perfectly sums up exactly what I feel about the matter.
Although I am married (I got married back in 1985 and am still married) it did seem a bit strange to me to have to go through the process of getting a marriage "license" and then go through the church ceremony of getting married. I figured that the marriage should be done in a church and the government should record and enforce the legal contract between the two parties, but just call it a contract between two persons.
Apparently back a long time ago people thought it was a good idea for the government to issue marriage licenses and approve marriages. I am sure that it seemed like a good idea at the time, collecting a fee for the marriage license and joining the two persons together for legal purposes in one easy step.
But as with all laws when society changes (or when a vocal and determined and activist minority gets into power) the law gets stretched and winds up being used in ways that it was not originally intended.
So not only do actions have consequences, laws have consequences down the road too.
Our marriage laws developed in a society in which many people were completely illiterate, and many more were barely literate. It was a minority of citizens who were equipped to negotiate a written contract and really know what was in it. Contracts of all kinds especially land purchases) and marriage licenses too, were quite often “signed” with an X, next to which someone else (a witness or occasionally an attorney, had written “John Doe, his mark”. Illiteracy to the degree of not being able to write one’s own name is obviously a huge obstacle to negotiating a contract and knowing what you were signing. Women were also regarded as chattel by the law — they were owned by their fathers until marriage tranferred ownership to their husbands.
While that state of affairs explains the utility of government-defined marriage, it’s worth noting that at that time, most if not all states fully recognized common law marriage, i.e. if a man and woman lived as husband and wife, and presented themselves to others as husband and wife, then they were just as married in the eyes of the law as a couple who had an actual marriage license and/or had been married by a member of the clergy.