Yeah, let’s just get rid of marriage altogether.
The state has recognized marriage for untold centuries. That insures the protection of women and children, legitimacy of heirs, and since the family is the foundation of human civilization, this state recognition of marriage is essential.
Saying “get the gov out of marriage” is like saying - “this patient is sick, let’s kill him!”
It’s not marriage, it’s really about how marriage gets promoted. A family in which parents of opposite genders share responsibility for the upbringing of a child is the ideal, and so promotion should be to keeping such marriages going without divorce, as well as encouraging faithfulness within the marriage as well. What does it mean to promote the general welfare? That’s an important question, because how that applies to marriage and those in need of charity. I certainly believe that preaching and advertising good moral behavior are what promoting the general welfare mean. That’s my opinion, to say the least. Since living in families with a fractured parentage is correlated with a great deal of the crime and high-risk behavior in a lot of our youth, and does apply to our nation’s general welfare, there is a job to at least promote it’s occurrence and its sustainability, coming from the preamble of the constitution.