Marriage, for 25,000 years, has been defined as being between a man and one (or occasionally more than one) woman. Redefining the word to include same gender persons is simply inappropriate. The reason the State has their hands in it is that the State has an interest in keeping track of who is is giving birth to whom, for rights of inheritance, and yada yada yada. Originally, when only one Church existed, they took care of all that, and reported it duly to the Government. The Jews did the same for our small community, of course. But once Christian unity became a thing of the past, that was no longer possible. And once a country was no longer 95% Christian (and 5% Jewish), that could no longer apply either. So the Government had to do it at that point.