Marriage: that inconvenient (for the State) institution.

“A grandiose judge, Sir Nicholas Wall, thinks unmarried people should get the legal rights that married people have. You might as well make people judges without requiring them to pass law exams and gain experience in the courts. And Sir Nicholas might as well have said ‘Let’s abolish marriage’.
Marriage is a solemn contract, in which binding promises are made, mainly for the benefit of children and the old and ill.
The law gave it special privileges in return because, in our old free society, the Government recognised that such stable unions were good for everyone. Without those privileges, marriage will die, because it is difficult, and needs to be supported through the bad times that besiege every couple. And a privilege stops being a privilege if it is given to everyone, as privileged Sir Nicholas really ought to know.
But the modern state (which is startlingly bad at looking after children, the sick and the old) hates marriage. It is private, beyond its control. It raises individual humans rather than conformist consumers. It keeps women out of wage-slavery and children out of day-orphanages, and resists the politically correct propaganda that pours out of the media and the schools.”
Peter Hitchens