Licensed professions use government as a bully to thwart unlicensed – and thus, unprivileged – competitors. All professional licenses are licenses to steal your opportunity to hire someone possibly more qualified but unwilling to do government’s bidding. Consumers have better tools than licensing to gauge professional quality.

The history of marriage licensing is equally laden with obvious special interests. Marriage licenses were once used – perhaps invented – to discourage interracial relationships. Today they are used to discourage gay relationships. Heterosexuality has its privileges, and it still doesn’t pay to be gay.

For disfavored singles and unlicensed couples – gay or otherwise – let’s aspire to remain unlicensed. Let’s exercise our God-given rights instead of seeking government’s permission to exercise them. Let’s work to get our own houses in order.

Licensed or not, all adults can draft a will or a trust to pass their property at death to their loved one(s), regardless of gender. Nobody needs a marriage license to fulfill this important function.

No couple needs legislators defining each side’s respective property rights when its relationship dissolves. This can and should be done contractually – not just by gay couples but also by husbands and wives.

I sympathize with people – gay or otherwise – whose employers do not extend privilege of certain employment benefits to their live-in co-habitants, as they do their employees’ married spouses. The solutions to this are better employers, not government adding a class of people to its A list.

There is only one valid justification for marriage licenses – legal convenience. They are useful to courts in determining legal relationships, duties and powers when couples break up or testify.

However, common-law privilege against coerced spousal testimony predates marriage licenses. Marriage licenses were never legally necessary to prove marital status.

We would be smart to get government completely out of marriage and give it back to God, where it all began and belongs.

Let God, not government, administer and sanction all of our loving relationships. Make government available to preside over our material disputes.

kenngividen@writersbureau.org