Not sure govt should be defining it in the first place. What it defines, it can redefine.
Marriage is a sacrament of Faith. Granting this kind of authority to the state is sacrilegious.
I understand and it’s true in theory. In practice, Gov’t has an interest in marriage because it has an interest in the changing generations, and in the social order. Hence, why the gays want in on both the gov’t and religious aspects - they know marriage is a fusion of both.
“Marriage is a sacrament of Faith. Granting this kind of authority to the state is sacrilegious.”
No, it is a civil as well as a religious institution. With many legal ramifications relating to criminal law, legal obligations for dependents, and inheritance.
It’s no sacrileg, for government marriage has not the pretence of sacredness. Marriage has been a civil institution, too, for millennia. It’s not exactly a chicken and egg situation, since religion predates politics. The religion I assume you’re talking about doesn’t, obviously. But that’s another matter. Suffice to say the two marriages, contract/special legal status and sacrament, can live side by side. They have, for thousands of years, without priests seeming too bent out of shape by it. And there is a compelling state interest in bonding men and women together.
Your argument is inapt for the basic reason that even were marriage redefined to include any old combination that popped into the government’s mind, it wouldn’t redefine marriage religiously. The sacrement would remain, if not the special status of the contract.
About the that which it defines it can redefine nonsense, I wonder if you’ve thought that through. Not that it’s nonsense that they can redefine the marriage status they’ve set up, but that that’s some sort of argument against legal marriage. You could say the same thing about criminal law. The wrongness of murderer is a religious concept. Does that mean the state shouldn’t outlaw murder for fear they may legalize it and thereby corrupt the ten commandments? No, that’s nutty.