Ironically, the folks who push your point-of-view usually also point to the founding American constitutional republic as the model we should be emulating as it was, undoubtedly, more economically libertarian than the current system. But the nation was, by your standards, a 'daddy' state well into the 20th century--the moral regulation was performed by the states under the Constitution--not the feds--but it was pervasive.
The modern concept of social libertarianism really only got its start in the 50's with the Kinseys diddling children and anything else that moved (all for, ahem, research) and then kicked-off in a big way with the hippies of the 60's and their embrace of drugs and rejection of silly stuff like sex should be between a man and his wife.
We now have a mommy state (from FDR and LBJ) in which any mention that maybe, perhaps, someone's moral behavior is less than admirable (no matter how decadent by historic standards) is met with hysterical screams that we are creating a police state (from the hippies and the new left and from a bunch of lazy yuppies who don't want to consider the consequences of making life convenient and titillating). Unless you think our founding fathers created and lived in a police state, this reaction is just nonsense, but it's one of the most important reactions our society has to overcome to preserve itself.
I do agree with you that some social conservatives ignore (or just don't understand ) the constitional niceties that reserve regulation of most moral issues to the States--so you get requests for federal intervention on issues the feds should have nothing to to with. I'm a Christian social conservative and a constitutional republic advocate. So I end up arguing with those folks whenever they go there. But I think the States should be regulating abortion and should not be enshrining homosexuals as a special political class or releasing heroin, cocaine and meth for sale in convenience stores. So there, I suspect we differ.
To me it is the same kind of thinking (parental) that says that the government ought to decide *how* people live their lives (their moral values). And it is just as dangerous and those who want economic socialism.
This article points to a real problem. Many people on the right absolutely do want to control others and shove their religion down the rest of our throats. For so many to deny that on this thread - tells me that they don't even see it. They are just so sure they are right - that they cannot even *see* that they are advocating taking away others' rights and privacy.