Here are a few additional aspects for consideration:
The principle in law of the age of majority, contracts are not valid to those who have yet to reach the age of majority, e.g., 18-years or older.
A marriage license is not a contract any more than an attorney’s license, driver’s license, practitioner’s license, etc.; it is merely evidence of lawful compliance and qualification. In most respects licenses are merely hidden taxes, while ensuring that uniformity is maintained in professional standards and culpability.
An Arizonian that is intent on residing in California, for example, will have to apply for a California driver’s license and have their vehicles reregistered and equipped to meet their smog and whatever other vehicle requirements, they cannot point to the U.S. Constitution for protections that their vehicles have already been registered and smogged in another Union state, with themselves being in possession of a valid out of state driver’s license.
Corporations, etc., are considered foreign entities in all states except where incorporated; a business does not get to go into another state and setup shop without first meeting that state’s own structured business requirements. Even still, structured businesses have to comply with local county or city requirements within the states they are operating in.
Certain states offer guaranteed recycling fees for glass or plastic, one cannot go into a state that does not and expect that fee to be honored.
Certain types of insurance (life, auto, accidental, travel, etc.) or health care coverage, benefits, etc., are not covered or are covered differently than in other states.
Could not “same sex marriages” otherwise be treated similarly to common law marriages, at the discretion of individual states (e.g., in California common law marriages are not recognized, save for those that can provide evidence that they had met the requirements of being common law partners within a common law marriage state)?
The real issue that should be present on the table is that marriage is a private contract of oneness and intimacy, a togetherness of unrelated families, and nothing more; be it between the parties themselves, or also include their religious commitments. Marriage should neither carry the weight of, nor be left tainted by politic-gaming.
Instead of arguing for governments to get further involved in the sanctimony of marriage, shouldn’t the argument be for hospitals to change their visitor’s policies, for the insurance and health care industries to change their coverage and beneficiary policies, including as well both public (at every governmental level) and private employers, etc., etc., etc.?
Otherwise, where do you draw the line, because before you realize it, we will have “Americanized” Muslims -and even Hindus- arguing for polygyny and then even polyandry “rights” within America? And then America’s robber-baron elitists will be clamoring (once more) for legalized marriage and inbreeding so as to ensure the future security of their hundreds of billions in inherited wealth. Finally, then cometh the last of the straws, Sodom and Gomorrah arrive to meet ancient Greece: publicly open bestiality, pedophilia and pederasty, and eventually even virtual-reality and robot marriages.
