Which must be officially recorded by the government in courthouses, so you've just circled around to the same point.
Churches or others could record each marriage but without government license.
True, but churches fail, split, have falling out among members, and may not be the best record keepers.
Governments use licenses as a money maker to oversee marriages...
If governments intend to make money from the nominal fee charged for marriage licenses, keeping them on file and protected in perpetuity, then they are going to go out of business from a crappy business model.
There is no net revenue generated from these fees in the long, or even intermediate, term.
WE will just agree to disagree, I think government has no business being in the marriage license business. If you want to protect yourself in the event of a divorce, get a prenuptial.
Governments issuing licenses was a key factor in granting gay people the right to marriage, they had a case that you can’t issue licenses to one group and not the other which is what was happening, gay people could have always written a contract to get the same rights as married people in terms of settlement of assets and child support in the event someone wanted to break the contract aka divorce.