Pope Leo XIII warned about the dangers of state involvement 130 years ago:
“Now, since the family and human society at large spring from marriage, these men will on no account allow matrimony to be the subject of the jurisdiction of the Church. Nay, they endeavor to deprive it of all holiness, and so bring it within the contracted sphere of those rights which, having been instituted by man, are ruled and administered by the civil jurisprudence of the community. Wherefore it necessarily follows that they attribute all power over marriage to civil rulers, and allow none whatever to the Church; and, when the Church exercises any such power, they think that she acts either by favor of the civil authority or to its injury. Now is the time, they say, for the heads of the State to vindicate their rights unflinchingly, and to do their best to settle all that relates to marriage according as to them seems good.”
That Leo XIII, what a raging pro-’gay marriage’ libertarian liberal. Bottom line is that the modern state’s definition of marriage is simply whatever judges, pols, or the voting majority thinks it is at any one time, and that’s all it ever can be. And if folks are conditioned to think the state defines marriage, then I reckon there must be a lot of folks that think ‘gay marriage’ is possible just because the state says it is possible.
FReegards
In my genealogy research I’m finding a lot of ancestors on the frontier who lived together as husband and wife for years before a traveling minister would come along and marry them. It looks like government started getting involved as land disputes arose after the death of a spouse.