'Outside of valid marriage'? What's a valid marriage?  A sacramentally affirmed union? Or a loving one?

You do realise,  don't you, that your approval of Paprocki's concept of 'valid marriage' would deny moral legitimacy to all those marriages that occurred before the 11th century? These were wholly civil contracts, since sacramental marriage in the Roman Catholic Church simply wasn't available until around this time (and then only gingerly, such was the Church's distrust and fear of sex).