Law & Authority: Same sex marriage

In today's class we discussed the concept of Law & Authority and how it relates to the Puritans and the Massachusetts Bay Colony.   Within this concept of Law & Authority we briefly covered orthodoxy vs. congregational independence, which is how to regulate/control a society, how to reconcile the theme of sameness and difference.  This immediately made me think of an issue that was discussed in my book review book, Nudge.  Thaler and Sunstein (the authors) present the idea of privatizing same sex marriage, meaning that "marriage" would be for private institutions, not for the state, thus opposing or supporting religious organizations would be free to create their own rules/regulations in regards to who can marry who. Thus, allowing the status quo to maintain itself--kind of--in a particular society (the U.S. in this case) while also allowing those who deviate from that to be satisfied as well.  It's an interesting concept to say the least considering that, aside from the financial benefits of marriage, it is not necessary.