When Marriage Was a Religious Matter and the State Was Out of It

From time to time, I hear the claim that “the problem with this whole marriage debate raging across America is all because the state is involved in marriage.”  Some will even claim that the only reasons states created marriage licenses and laws were based upon race.  They seem to think that sometime between the Civil War and 1920 states began to regulate marriage through licenses and laws.  Before this, it was solely a religious matter left to churches, and if we only went back to this, this debate would subside and go away. 
 
Last week, a caller to the Rush Limbaugh Radio Show even said that while she was a lesbian who married her partner, she didn’t like the radical gay rights movement’s effort to unravel marriage. Still, she placed the blame at the government getting involved in marriage and taking it away from churches.  She also claimed that this usurpation had happened in recent US history and was counter to our previous customs.
 
Marriage is certainly a private matter with religious roots, but it is also a public concern that is of deep interest to government.  Marriage is a special relationship that benefits society and children like no other. This is why government has an interest in advancing and protecting the institution.
 
Those who hold this notion of government intrusion look to a fictitious history that never really existed.  Government marriage licenses aren’t something that began 100 years ago, or even 150 years ago.  Marriage licenses and laws in America date back 400 years.  We have a marriage license dated May 12, 1621 signed by Governor William Bradford of the Plymouth Colony performed by the local magistrate and published in the town.
 
The “Charters and Laws of Massachusetts Bay” and “Records of the Colony of New Plymouth in New England” also record various marriage matters. Such things are not easy for us to read in our modern grammar but take note of the government role in each item:

The General Court of Massachusetts Bay passed an act, September 9th, 1639, “for prevention of all unlawful marriages.” which provided :
 
Henceforth no persons shall be joined in marriage, before the intention of the parties proceeding therein hath been three times published, at some time of publick lecture or town meeting, in both the towns where the parties or either of them do ordinarily reside, or be set up in writing upon some post of their meeting house door in public view, there to stand so as it may be easily read, by the space of fourteen days.
 
That no person whatsoever in this jurisdiction shall join any persons together in marriage, but the magistrate, or such other as the general court, or court of assistants, shall authorize in such place, where no magistrate is near. Nor shall any join themselves in marriage but before some magistrate or person authorized as aforesaid. Nor shall any magistrate or other person authorized as afore said, join any persons together in marriage, or suffer them to join together in their presence, before the parties to be married have been published according to law.’