Wrong. A license is the state assuming the authority over the existence of the union.
Under Natural Rights, the state doesn't have the authority to create, maintain or dissolve a marriage union. All it can do is accept the existence of the marriage contract between two human beings - a marriage contract made by them, not the state. If - and only if - that marriage contract violates a law somewhere, then, and only then, can the state challenge it's validity, and only to the extent that the law is violated.
What people don't understand is that the power of marriage doesn't exist in the state. It doesn't exist, and it never will. Because marriage is solely between human beings, before God, based on love. Under natural rights, those issues not not exist as powers of the state, and never can, and never will, because the state is, by definition, not human.
We live in a time when Americans have forgotten about natural rights - even conservatives. When they do think of them, they think they're some sort of way to organize rights the state should agree to. They are not. They are much, much bigger than that. They are an acknowledgement, by the Founders, that there are things that the state simply does not include, because it does not include it. Fish do not include bananas. Rain does not include computer source code. Automobiles do not include earthquake faults.
The state does not include marriage. Human beings alone, and the love they have for each other that backs their pledge to each other before God (or whatever they hold holy), is the power of marriage.
Giving the state the power of marriage is the abandonment of our very humanity itself.
Sorry I disagree. When God instituted marriage, He WAS the government. Since then, whatever community or culture man has instituted, whomever or whatever the governing authority also controlled the rules regarding the legality or validity of marriage, whether secular or religious or both (in a theocracy).
You yourself admit the marriage contract must abide by whatever laws regarding marriage exist. If a contract is governed by the law, then it is subject to the authority that made that law. A marriage license is just an inexpensive legal shortcut, instead of hiring lawyers to draw up the papers, you buy the basic license from city hall.
A marriage license is a state issued license recognizing the legal validity of a union because it meets or fulfills the laws regarding such union; otherwise they would refuse to issue the license.
The state has both the right and duty to regulate contracts, marriage is a contract, it’s that simple.