Privatizing Marriage

Abstract

In a sense, a form of privatization is already well underway - as a matter of actual practice, constitutional doctrine, and enforcement policy, if not as a matter of large-scale transformations in state law. A less extreme version would also abolish official marriage, but at the same time recognize the legal status of "civil unions," whose availability and meaning would remain to be decided. [...] people can support freedom of speech and property rights on diverse grounds, and the principle of religious toleration can be accepted from a variety of diverse perspectives, theological and nontheological.