Your belief that state licensure for marriage creates some kind of wholesome social environment is spurious. Marriage was never a contract with the state until early in the 20th century. It has become a worthless and troublesome infringement on personal liberty. Now, with the requirement to acknowledgement the legitimacy of buggering as a state recognized life style, marriage has lost most of its legitimacy. The church must retake its prerogative and abandon the state with its grievous demands.
Call it what you will. Marriage is first and foremost a religious rite, not a government mandated contract.
You can keep surrendering until you get all the way to the other side.
The government of today has proven it is incompetent to regulate marriage.
So take the sharp object from it until, if ever, it regains its sanity.
Not a bad idea at all.
I don't know why this factually false information keeps being posted on Free Republic. It's been going on for years, with numerous people. Not meaning to attack you; you're just the latest person I've seen and I happen to be annoyed enough about other issues that I'm responding.
I have personally seen marriage licenses in county courthouses dating back to the early 1800s. Government-issued marriage licenses long predate the “early 20th century,” and long predate the 1800s, as well.
That may be a good or a bad thing, but it's a matter of indisputable fact.
The state has legitimate government interests in protecting and promoting marriage, not the least of which interests include child custody and inheritance rights.
It is a mark of social collapse that we now have huge percentages of children born out of wedlock, and even those born within marriage are quite likely to experience divorce. The government can and should be promoting and encouraging marriages. The fact that it isn't doing so, and actually is doing damage to marriage, doesn't mean that it doesn't have a legitimate interest in marriage.
Politicians sometimes do things which hurt the people they're supposed to be helping. That's nothing new. Damaging marriage is just a new example of government governing badly.