Why, please explain. Thank-you.
Marriage predates the state. It predates ‘America’. It even predates ‘England’.
There were dioceses, bishops and priests all performing marriage.
Arguing that marriage depends on the state creates the wrong relation - the ‘infrastructure’ as it can be put was there before, sometimes long before the state, and long before the nation state concept of Westphalia.
Long before separation doctrines under Locke came about. It was revolutionary in the 18th century.
In other words, the state does not ‘define’ marriage, nor does it ‘create’ marriage. The state merely recognizes marriage.
At present, the relationship is marriage -> state. The priests marry someone and the state recognises it. This leads to conflict with gay marriage, which is attempting to invert the relationship to:
State -> marriage.
So rather than fight this battle over rightly ordered priorities, the fight is to
State || Marriage.
What that leaves is a vacuum. The State needs marraige, so if we divorce sacramental marriage from the state, the state will fill that void with ‘something else’.
When it does - it will also eventually demand recognition of said ‘marriage’, which is the same boat we are in.
Except then - the state just has to bar recognition of Catholic marriage. Since you’ve conceded that the state can do whatever it wants wrt marriage - it can do just this.
It won’t take very long. The real battle is the first one. Gay marriage proponents want to divorce the state from sacramental marriage. They can’t do that unless they get this separation doctrine to divide us.