I am a progressive liberal who argued in favor of marriage equality with several conservatives who all cited wild slippery slope idiocies: People will be marrying their dog

People will marry their refrigerator

Next step is multiple marriages (polygamy)

What blather. First, marriage means consent of some sort and no dog or refrigerator can consent.

We already have laws against polygamy.

Finally, my argument rested on the current structure of society, laws and taxes. ALL are constructed on either individual, single people or two people. The tax code structured for single or married could care less about the genders under either situation.

So I ended up saying essentially the same as you did- abolish marriage as a legal structure sanctioned by government.

Marriage is one of the longest held church state entanglements as ministers act in place of a governmeent official. If a couple wanted to be married, they can go to their church and have a ceremony but this would have NO legal standing in the eyes of the law.

In order to have legal standing, couples MUST go to the courhouse and be contractually joined to be able to have the benefits in taxes, contracts (buying homes) or children. A cleric saying some words in this regard are irrelevant