Don’t have a same-sex marriage if your church tells you not to. Either obey the church, or leave it. Don’t have a same-sex marriage if you think it’s immoral, sinful or just plain wrong.

But if you choose to have a same-sex marriage, don’t ask the state for permission. Heterosexuals long ago fell into the trap of state marriage licensing, and it’s a process that should be undone. The sooner it’s undone, the sooner we can end debates over which marriages should receive state sanction and which should not. None should.

The whole controversy involving same-sex marriage is tied up in a statist belief that state government must play some role in private marriages. It’s not true. Marriage is nothing more than a contract between two consenting adults or teenagers. Period. If Harry marries Sally, the union is supposed to be between those two — not Harry, Sally and state of New York. If Harry and Sally are religious, the marriage may involve Harry and Sally and God above, with permission of a minister. The marriage should never involve the state.

Churches and other religious organizations helped fund California’s Proposition 8. The measure won a sound victory, and it amends the state’s constitution to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman. In supporting this measure, religious organizations inadvertently strengthened the notion that a marriage involves two people and the state, rather than two people and God — as churches usually advise.

The Rev. Matt Trewhella, pastor of the pro-life and ultra conservative Mercy Seat Christian Church in Milwaukee, has long refused to conduct marriages for couples who’ve obtained marriage licenses. A brochure for parishioners states: “When you marry with a marriage license, your marriage is a creature of the state. It is a corporation of the State!”

He explains that the state sometimes exerts control in the marriage. Wisconsin schools, for example, administered a test to children with questions that some parents thought invaded family privacy. When parents asked officials what gave them right, Trewhella reports, they were told: “your marriage license and their birth certificates.”

Oppose gay marriage on moral grounds, if you choose. But don’t support empowering states to decide which marriages are valid and which are not. Doing so only legitimizes the state’s role in our lives, our families and our homes.