There's a lot of hatred over marriage due to history and mistreatment of it. I'm not religious but I want a ceremony (in a field not a church, and not necessarily with any priest or such). It's like when I asked my atheist dad why he celebrated Christmas. He told me it was a social holiday about unity, love, and family. Later I learned that historically Christmas was a 'pagan' holiday called Saturnalia that honored the Roman father of life. Because historically marriage meant passing of property and treated women as such, and statistically people don't take it too seriously, doesn't mean you have to treat it as such right now and in your relationship. If it has a bitter taste for you because the system is broken, and you just don't want anything to do with it, that's cool. But it seems more productive to me to try to fix the system. It's like if in the 50s you hated segregation so you chose to stop drinking water until there was only one fountain for everyone, but you forgot to show up for the march.
I like to pretend that if I were alive in the 50s and 60s I would've worked for equality. Really, I have no idea. Marriage is different. People don't choose to be black. People choose to get married, and I would never tell someone its the wrong choice for them (unless, of course, I didn't like a particular individual that a friend or family member was planning to marry, but that's totally different). I just personally have no interest in it.
My good sir, the comparison is yours.Slavery has ended, but marriage survives.