“Though the religious aspects of your marriage may be most important to you, people of many other religions would regard them as totally meaningless.”
Why should I care how others regard my marriage? I reckon they are free to think what they want about it, just as I am theirs according to what my faith teaches. Unless gubberment starts making folks accept stuff they know can’t exist.
“Before the existence of government, individuals would inflict vengeance upon those who wronged them. If someone (bleep)ed my wife, I couldn’t take the (bleep)er to court, but there would be nothing to stop me from killing him myself (unless he was too much bigger and stronger than me, in which case I’d be out of luck). There are no historical records to show how well this worked as a system, but it obviously worked well enough for the human race to survive long enough to invent governments.”
This could be true. I reckon I’m not seeing how gubberment getting its beak outta marriage is connected to it. No civil marriage licenses = no civilization?
Freegards
By insisting the the government not be involved in defining marriage, it ends up not supporting marriage at all.
There is no neutral position on marriage that the government can take. It either supports it or it doesn't. If it doesn't then it's undermining it maybe inadvertently but definitely through inaction.