Traditionally marriage is about property rights, for the spouses and children. As such it was effectively a contract, and this is very much in what the government is for, since they will be the ones enforcing the contract if the parties disagree.
In the modern USA especially, a whole package of benefits is tied to being married, from health care to pensions and so on. Again, the government literally must be involved.
All of this is probably the main reason that people pushed so hard for gay marriage. Not having access to all of that was real discrimination.
I would love for marriage to move from being a special thing to being like any other contract, but it would take decades of work to begin to untangle it from the current model.
Traditionally marriage is about property rights, for the spouses and children. As such it was effectively a contract, and this is very much in what the government is for, since they will be the ones enforcing the contract if the parties disagree.
In the modern USA especially, a whole package of benefits is tied to being married, from health care to pensions and so on. Again, the government literally must be involved.
All of this is probably the main reason that people pushed so hard for gay marriage. Not having access to all of that was real discrimination.
I would love for marriage to move from being a special thing to being like any other contract, but it would take decades of work to begin to untangle it from the current model.
Then we should just get rid of it