In June this year a young Lebanese couple, Abdallah Salam and Marie-Joe Abi-Nassif, got married. They held their nuptials in the garden of a Beirut manor in front of a small Lebanese flag. Family and friends bore witness to their vows.

And that’s how the bride and groom wanted it: a wedding sanctioned by the state, not by religious authorities. Theirs was one of the few civil marriages attempted in Lebanon – where the simple act of getting married has long been a reflection of the country’s social and sectarian fault lines.

Salam, 32, a Sunni Muslim, and Abi-Nassif, 30, a Christian, had hoped that they could finally break with a social code that made holding a non-religious marriage a fraught proposition – and meant those wanting one needed to travel abroad. But two months later their marriage has yet to be registered by the interior ministry, which – along with Lebanese religious institutions – has maintained a deathly silence.

The couple’s attempt to change the accommodation between citizen and the Lebanese state has stalled, exposing glaring gaps between the state’s declared intentions and what it is actually willing to do. Successive leaders have vowed to give space to both secular and religious people, to liberals and devout conservatives, and promised that, nearly 30 years after a devastating civil war, central government can assert its will over the feudal lords and fiefdoms that still play a decisive role in the country’s affairs.

“We want Lebanon to be a country for all people with equality before the law, free of the archaic and confessional laws and religious tribunals that apply at the moment,” said Abi-Nassif. “We really don’t exist as citizens – just members of groups. It feels like the state has completely subjugated its sovereignty.”

In March last year, she gave up her job as a Manhattan lawyer and embarked on a career as an opera singer. She has sung in Carnegie Hall and around Europe, and performed with the Lebanese Philharmonic Orchestra. Both she and Salam, a New York lawyer and the son of the former Lebanese ambassador to the UN, Nawaf Salam, come from well-known families – a fact that has given prominence to the message behind their marriage, and caused awkward moments for the country’s ruling class.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Interior minister Raya al-Hassan has failed to intervene in the case, drawing criticism from Abi-Nassif. Photograph: Xinhua/Alamy

“We come from families who served the country in one way or another,” she said. “My father was a general who served in all Lebanon’s wars since independence. We have had instilled in us a lot of patriotism and we wanted to serve our country on a social level. I hope it breaks some of the unbearable hypocrisy of the system. If a civil marriage could be done abroad and registered in five minutes, it could be done here too.”

Abi-Nassif added: “This has nothing to do with our faiths. We are not against religious marriages.”

Travel agencies across Lebanon do a brisk trade in marriage packages to nearby Cyprus, where couples, often from different sects, regularly go to wed. Their marriages are registered by Lebanese authorities without fuss and the arrangement has long been seen as an acceptable alternative to trying such a thing at home.

In Lebanon, religious institutions have a powerful voice in the affairs of state and in the way people live. A system devised in the aftermath of the civil war apportions state positions on the basis of sect, and critics say this has consolidated sectarianism and reduced the notion of citizenship to an aspiration.

“The reason why the religious establishments are against it is that it breaks down their power base,” said Salam. “For me it’s about identity; for them it’s about power. They worry they are going to lose people who go for a civil marriage.

“Removing reference to sect [from marriage papers] is about redefining the relationship between citizen and state, to create a new modern social reality. There needs to be space for seculars, liberals and a civil society. This is really a chance to create a real form of citizenship. The time has come for Lebanese to mobilise, to the extent that we can do it. The message is that we can stand up for something.”

Salam gave legal advice to the first couple to attempt a civil marriage inside Lebanon in 2013. After a delay, the marriage was eventually registered, as were 12 subsequent locally held civil ceremonies – all of them low-key, making little attempt to create a visible precedent.

The spectacle of his own wedding, and the messages of social activism the couple readily promote, made this more of a test case – a watershed moment for a state that continues to wrestle with issues of sovereignty and identity.

“There have been two judicial opinions reaffirming that it is clearly legal to register a civil marriage here,” said Abi-Nassif. “I don’t want to be pessimistic. If people are willing to make sacrifices to build a better Lebanon, it is possible.”

The couple are appealing to Lebanon’s interior minister, Raya al-Hassan, to break the deadlock. So far, she and almost all other political leaders have refused to weigh in.

“That the first female interior minister in the Arab world is reluctant to apply the law is disappointing,” said Abi-Nassif. “It is the bare minimum she could do. And as a woman, I believe it doesn’t serve the country well.”