How is the nanny state interfering in anyone’s lives when the folks in question are directly going to the state to dissolve their state sanctioned marriage?
I don't disagree with your sentiment, but a marriage? Do I have to take state sanctioned communion and get state sanctioned baptized at my state sanctioned church?
“Some men say the earth is flat.
Some men say the earth is round.
But if it is flat. Could Parliament make it round?
And if it round. Could the kings command flatten it?”
The Oklahoma legislature can declare that my wife and I are King and Queen of Mercia if it pleases them. It may carry some legal fiction and have consequences under the law, but it does not make us in *any real* sense the King and Queen of Mercia.
The state may pass a law declaring it has infallibility. That does not make it infallible. The state claims the authority of the church: to administer the sacrament of marriage. It clearly does not. Any "marriage" created by it is merely a legal fiction carrying legal consequences. It is no more a marriage than I am King of Mercia.
It may, therefore, dispose of these "marriages" however it sees fit.