Marriage regulation Quotes

Traditionally, marriage is one arena where states have all but plenary power; it took until 1967 for the Supreme Court to tell states they could not prohibit interracial marriage.

Defining marriage is a power that should be left to the states. Moreover, no state should be forced to recognize a marriage that is not within its own laws, Constitution, and legal precedents.

Marriage has historically been in the domain of the States to regulate.

President Bush once said that marriage is a sacred institution and should be reserved for the union of one man and one woman. If this is the case - and most Americans would agree with him on this - then I have to ask: Why is the government at all involved in marrying people?

Marriage has always been a subject of regulation by the State. Is marriage ever looked upon as only a private contract between the man and the woman, to be made whenever they alone think fit, to last only during the term they may agree upon, and to end at their own will? Is the State no party to such a contract? Has the State no voice in consenting that it shall be made, in regulating its conditions after it is made, and in determining when and how it may be dissolved? Away, then with this argument of the free-love school!

The comforts and well-being of the poor cannot be permanently secured without some regard on their part, or some effort on the part of the legislature, to regulate the increase of their numbers, and to render less frequent among them early and improvident marriages.

Congress has no authority to interfere in the internal regulations of particular States, relative to the instruction of slaves in the principles of morality and religion; to their comfortable clothing and accommodations, and subsistence; to the regulation of their marriages, and the prevention of the violation of their rights thereof.

Second, marriage is an issue that our Founding Fathers wisely left to the states.

If marriage really is a sacred institution, then why is the government controlling it, especially in a nation that affirms separation of church and state?

In a few years, no doubt, marriage licences will be sold like dog licences, good for 12 months.

No Congress ever has seen fit to amend the Constitution to address any issue related to marriage. No Constitutional Amendment was needed to ban polygamy or bigamy, nor was a Constitutional Amendment needed to set a uniform age of majority to ban child marriages.