What I am saying is that the government should never have given the church power to legally marry people in the first place.
The church hasn't been given any "power". The power is still held by the state. And even that is negligible. Marriage is, and should be, mostly a matter of registering an incorporation. It is entirely reasonable that such an incorporation should be witnessed by a third party. That the government recognize religious institutions as capable of performing so simple a task and allowing them to do so should be welcome. We've enough petty bureaucrats as is.
Try this as a solution. The state allows any organization to act as the third party; i.e., churches, the BSA, GSA & YMCA, meat packing guilds, rock clubs, miniature dog breeding associations, quilting bee circles, petty bureaucrats, ect. These institutions would devise any ceremony they thought appropriate to make witness to the signing of a certificate of incorporation. Parties A & B then take the certificate to a state register of such certificates and enter said on the books as a marriage between parties A and B. The state register officer would not file the certificate if either party was being held in a crossface chickenwing, arm-hook sleeper, full nelson or purple nurple.
It's not the man that knows the most that has the most to say.
Anon
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