A Suggestion on Marriage Law Reform

In light of all the scare rhetoric on the right about ministers being required to perform same-sex marriage against their beliefs:

Everyone in this country bends over backwards to accommodate religious activists. As far as the hideous specter of same-sex marriage goes, I have a suggestion:

In most states -- all, actually, if I'm not mistaken -- clergy are automatically authorized to perform weddings. I don't see that this has any particular virtue -- they are, in all actuality, acting as agents of the state, which sort of blurs the line of state/church separation and leads to a great deal of readily exploited confusion regarding the actual role of marriage and religion in society. (Please remember that the Christian Church didn't consider marriage worth worrying about for about a thousand years, so they are really pretty much latecomers in that regard, in spite of the fact that they are now laying claim to the word and the institution itself.)

I think no clergy should have the power to perform civil marriages under any circumstances; in lieu of that total exclusion, if clergy are invested with such authority, they should be required to marry any couples permitted by law to marry.

Nothing would preclude any member of the ministry or priesthood from performing religious ceremonies, but those ceremonies would not be legally recognized in the absence of a civil ceremony.

That seems to me to simplify matters a lot. It removes the specter of violation of religious freedom, clarifies the roles of the state and religious institutions vis-a-vis civil marrriage laws, and just makes it much tidier all around.

I realize that's the French model, but then, the French are a very practical people. And they invented champagne, too.