SFGate is running a Wall Street Journal piece titled “Couples in U.S. used to marry early and informally“.

[T]he state of marriage in early America: no license, witness, ceremony, often not even a magistrate. Some couples wanted a blessing from church or state, but common-law marriages, men and women behaving as spouses without a formal contract, were both legal and respectable. An 1843 Indiana marriage law stated, “No particular form of ceremony shall be necessary, except that the parties shall declare … that they take each other as husband and wife.”

Hardly as “enduring” as say, slavery or hunger or abject poverty. Maybe those should be protected too.