Wow, you are mixing up so many things it’s almost impossible to parse them all out - legal versus common law? Banns versus marriage license? What is the difference between “legal” and common law? Are you saying that corporate administrative law is more legal than common law? What is the difference in the legitimacy before the law, it’s legality, of banns, versus licensing? Isn’t licensing just a codification of the process that can also be lawfully acknowledged as banns? In which case, why license - just to spend extra money to avoid the time necessary for banns? So is legality, to you, merely a process of money?
Because to the government, it’s definitely about the money. And to get the money, the government claims to declare legitimacy - if you pay - for something you don’t have to pay for. Something not, in fact just “in your private mind,” but before you and your spouse and God. And the Founders acknowledged that that relationship was no business of government. Your own quotes show that those licenses were voluntary, and did not supply the sole source of legality, because they were traditionally done by banns out of where? Where I said - the church.
Do I think a Mosque should tell us what marriage is? Absolutely - it should tell us what marriage is FOR MUSLIMS. Do YOU think that a Christian church should tell Muslims what marriage is? Do you think Christian churches should hold validation authority over Muslim marriages, and invalidate them for not being Christian?
And you think that government licensing is the solution? Then your position is pure statism. The solution is not the government, it is the laws that protect freedom of religion that does not require government licensing of religious acts, AND protects religions from EACH OTHER. Why should the government need ot “acknowledge” a marriage, except under grounds of violations of the public welfare? And why should the definition of public welfare have anything to do with something that is not already a crime? Pedophilia is a crime, so marrying a child is a crime. Kissing a tree is not a crime, so marrying one should not be illegal. What do you care what other people do? Why the hell has everyone decided to get into everyone elses business? And you don’t have to try to marry a tree - Protestants think Catholic marriages are void, Catholics think Buddhist marriages are void, Muslims think everyone’s marriages are void and want to marry children themselves. The Founders ACKNOWLEDGED this - and PROTECTED IT. Not by requiring government licensing, but by keeping the government the hell out of it.
Banns versus licensing gives your whole argument away. Licensing is revealed to be a government addition, purely voluntary, and not required. That’s what Jefferson agreed to, for his own reasons. But it was NOT required for validity.
Sometimes I think people simply don’t want to be free anymore. No one even comprehend the thinking of the Founders. Society is NOT government, dammit. And neither is civilization. And neither WAS America.
But if you want to submit your relationship with your spouse and your vow before God to a government bureaucrat’s judegement - go for it. Don’t let me stand in your way.
Bingo, you want to end any definition of marriage, and in effect end marriage.
That is a childish point of view since law has to deal with marriage and always has, America has never not had "legal" marriage, even a common-law marriage, had to, and still does have to, be "legal", to be recognized in courts and in law.
100 years ago, 50 years ago, 200 years ago, you could call whatever you wanted marriage, but it didn't make it legal.
Like the rest of the left, you want something that has never existed in America, and cannot exist in reality.