Marriage in the US worked for over 200 years. We did not become a totalitarian nanny state ruled by religious fanatics and idealogues simply because we upheld traditonal marriage in our laws and courts.
So for anyone to look at marriage and argue that the government has no place in sanctioning it is simply ignorant of history.
Now. If you wanna know WHY tradional marriage is nearly dead in our government today, then start with LBJ and his Great Society. Liberals and those who argue against marriage in our laws and in our courts are the ones to blame.
Not conservatives.
The big problem in allowing the courts to have a say in marriage is that this cedes to the government the ability to define marriage — even a constitutional amendment defining marriage is dangerous this way: because once it is accepted as legitimate then it may be altered the same way it was created and, having ceded the power to define it, you no longer have a valid objection to the state defining it. (i.e. like the Constitution only mattering when it is beneficial but ignored when it is cumbersome or would prevent things that are now done by tradition
[like asserting the interstate commerce clause allows the regulation of intrastate commerce [and non-commerce] to support the War on Drugs].)