If a state simply stopped providing marriage certificates and left things up to the bride, groom, and their church/family/atheist support group, something pretty cool could happen- the end of the divorce industry. No state marriage means no state divorce. This doesn't mean a court wouldn't get involved in a particularly nasty conflict, but the order of progression would be different. The private entity that married them would be responsible for adjudication. A civil suit may be permissible, but it would generally take place after it became clear that one party wasn't just in conflict with his or her spouse, but with the church or other organization as well.
Anyone coming into a civil suit in conflict with their spouse and their church ought to find the result rather devastating, so I suspect, assuming we fire all the feminist judges, people would try very hard to keep themselves from ending up in that situation.
The thing that hit me last night is that this is the sort of thing a state can implement, assuming it can free itself from the current left/right debate and put all those lawyers out of work.
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