re: Should polygamy be legal in all 50 states?

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BS, its clear established fact that religious marriage came first

only after laws started allowing women to have rights, own property, and have legal standing in the courts, then and only then, did the state recognize it as a legal contractual marriage that affords you benefits and rights for things like property and children

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Sort of correct, but the truth is that in marriages in the "Old World" of Europe there was not a separation between (Catholic) church and state as there is here in America today.

So, a religious marriage was essentially a contractual marriage, even more so among nobility and the well-off, with arranged marriages, dowries and the like. You could only got annulments from the Catholic church; there was no divorce. When Henry VIII couldn't get an annulment via the Catholic church, he created his own Church (the Anglican church) under which he could divorce his wife.