Comment 12 by Smegmar :

Comment 11 by mr_DNA :

Historically marriage was seen as a contract and sometime in the fifteen century the church started to impose its self as the guardian of marriage as a Christian institution as notions of romance started to take hold.

I don't think that you can make claims about marriage from a historical point of view when it is not obvious for whom was it seen like you say it was seen. It's a difficult and complicated subject. Not something you can deduce from your atheism or dislike of religion.

I was being brief. I was summarising the churches involvement in 'wedlock' in my own country. I think I was giving a fairly impartial account of historical facts. Marriages were not originally carried out by the church and the church did not take an interest in them unless they were aristocracy. To quote :

"With few local exceptions, until 1545, Christian marriages in Europe were by mutual consent, declaration of intention to marry and upon the subsequent physical union of the parties.[24][25] The couple would promise verbally to each other that they would be married to each other; the presence of a priest or witnesses was not required"

This quote is from a history web site not an atheist one and I was not applying a critique on grounds of atheism. Of course I have an opinion about whether there is a being who creates universes and then cares about the mating habits of a species of ape on an insignificant planet, but I wasn't addressing that point but rather the utility of marriage purely from a legal stand point.