Libertarians support polygamy and homosexual marriage, social conservatives don’t.
“Libertarians support polygamy and homosexual marriage, social conservatives don’t.”
Libertarians are found across the spectrum on these issues; like many other conservatives.
Just like members of the GOP vs GOP party positions, Libertraians do not necessarily fall in line with the views of the Libertarian Party (much like most Catholics who do practice some form of contraception outside of their church’s teaching).
Besides, Libertarianism in politics is less about the moral position of an individual Libertarian as it is their beliefs regardiing the limitations of secular law.
The political question is not always the moral question.
The Conservative political question goes to the requirements of law in order to (1) maintain security, deter crime, and establish civil order, as well as (2) the limitations of law in order to preserve Liberty.
The moral question is larger and assumes we can, and ought to, choose to act for the good without secular law having to be used to mandate what is good in every detail of life. The more that secular law is the source of mandating what is “good” the less it is by the human conscience that true good is chosen, and the law gravitates to corrupting good for the mere benefit of the secular regime of law.
Within Conservatism at large both the social conservative moral priority and the Liberterian legal priority must be addressed. Conservatism needs them both and needs both the philisophical contest between them and the willingness to reach a workable balance that respects both the side of “moral order” and the side of Liberty, recognizing the limitations of law and the endless ability of action by individuals and free associations in a free society.
Secular law is the state. Libertarians are not ambivalent about their disdain for the intrusions of the state against Liberty. That’s a philosophical position regarding the use of secular law. SOME (not all) social conservativs are philosophically ambivalent about the state, calling it a tyrant when it offends their values but not always opposed to using it to establish law to not merely respect their values but mandate them; much like the secular humanists try to do now.
The true Libertarian, when it comes to how far the law can go to mandate what is “legal” from a moral point of view, is neither pro or con toward the moral values of either the social conservative or the secular humanist. Th true Libertarian seeks for the law to more often be an agnostic - neither pro or con - and expects that the law ought to, and the institutions of the state ought to be neither proactively for or proactively against; letting the social dynamics of individuals and all of society’s free associations to work for and establish MORE of the social and moral norms of the society, outside of legal mandates. That’s not a position against the moral values of social conservatives; it’s a position about how we use, or refuse to use, the secular law to comvert every moral position to a legal (state authority) position.