Actually, it doesn't have the right; it has the power. There is a huge difference. But yes, the state can set certain standards, as long as they do not violate my rights. When they do, the state must explain why such violation is in its interest in doing so. When it can't, as in this case, it looses that power. It's a nice balance. The state's first duty is to protect the rights of its citizens.
Libertarians oppose a military draft and oppose immigration laws. The Founding Fathers had no problem with military conscription, and I doubt if they would have approved of the incremental invasion of America by Mexico.
And this is relative to the discussion, how?
The Founding Fathers did give us a Constitution which contains within itself a mechanism for improvement, but that same mechanism can be abused in the wrong hands.
Indeed it can. But as the last 150 years have shown, far more harm can come from those who decide that states have "rights", and that the rights of individuals are secondary to the "norms" and "standards" the elite decide on. That would also classify as wrong hands.
And of those 6 million people who live together and produce offspring, their partnerships are far more likely to frgament than those of people who are married.
That's a dubious conclusion, since 50% of all first marriages and 60% of all second marriages fail. Far fewer of those living together out of wedlock have children than do married couples. That proves disastrous for the children.
Individuals who are given to instant gratification lack the dedication and self-discipline which is necessary to make a successful marriage work.
Indeed, but those living together have already made some commitment, so those are not the ones giving in to instant gratification.
And they produce the offspring which create the societal problems we see all about us as these children have no role models, no direction, no sense of family honor, no self-discipline or self respect, and become a burden rather than an asset to society.
Almost all of those children spring from one of two circumstances: the single mom who has numerous boyfriends and one night stands, and married couples who divorce. As I said, few of those who live together bring new children into the relationship. As for legislating against a lack of self discipline, I could think of a whole host of laws, most of which though would violate the rights of individuals. A free society pays a certain price for that freedom.
When people choose to live together outside marriage the ultimate consequences are children and society ulitmately bears the burden of dealing with the problems these children generate.
You are simply not talking about most of those 6 million couples living outside of marriage because they are normally quite self sufficient, normally do not have children, and are not a burden on society.
But you may want to look at the children from divorced parents and the single moms, including teen mothers, who have 3, 4 and more children all from different fathers, not one of whom would consider living with the mother, let alone marriage. This is far more about laws regulating morals than any serious attempt to prevent single parent children.
This assertion, I gather, is based on your personal preference for how things ought to be. I lived for twenty years in the inner city, where marriage is essentially dead. Not ONE of the shack-up couples I encountered was (a) self-sufficient, (b) childless (unless one was on the way), or (c) not a burden on society. Across America, these are millions of people.
But I suppose you're thinking about the sleep-around-before-committing crowd--white, middle-class couples who postpone both marriage and child-bearing because they are focused on careers and/or "finding themselves." Sadly, pregnancy has a way of intruding into such relationships (it being natural and all), and when abortion does not result, illegitimacy and all its attendant ills quite often follow. Not at all surprising that the same folks who tell pollsters they see nothing wrong with shacking up also see no problem in bringing a fatherless baby into their Brave New World.
But that doesn't make the problems go away. It just spreads around the squalor that is the everyday norm in the ghetto today. And every one of us has to pay the price.