> marriage is only an issue because some Republicans feel they have every right to control your personal relationships
This is completely OT but marriage is by design, its very nature and tradition not a personal relationship. That's why you have a gathering (the wedding itself), someone usually perceived as important presiding, a party (the reception), why you take your vows in public, why its registered in often publicly accessible registry, why you announce it in a newspaper etc, etc. The concept is even established in the common law by which you can, sometimes and in some places, become married by "acting married" in public.
Marriage is for the society much more than it is for the people getting married. And in the western culture governments decided the terms of marriage (also, possibly more importantly, divorce) on and off since antiquity. It's not some new development.
That's a vary western view of marriage, other cultures have a vary different view of similar concepts. In the US we pay lip service to the idea of separating church and state, but we don't actually do much to separate culture and state which means religion has a back door.
This is completely OT but marriage is by design, its very nature and tradition not a personal relationship. That's why you have a gathering (the wedding itself), someone usually perceived as important presiding, a party (the reception), why you take your vows in public, why its registered in often publicly accessible registry, why you announce it in a newspaper etc, etc. The concept is even established in the common law by which you can, sometimes and in some places, become married by "acting married" in public.
Marriage is for the society much more than it is for the people getting married. And in the western culture governments decided the terms of marriage (also, possibly more importantly, divorce) on and off since antiquity. It's not some new development.