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"If you favor gay marriage, abortion rights, etc, then fine, but do the honorable thing and make the case for them"...

Respectfully, I believe that the case for ANY restriction of individual actions can only be made on the basis of those actions having an effect on someone else against their will. IOW even if 99 percent of the people consider something foul and disgusting, that, alone, is not a good enough reason for it to be made illegal.

The constitution explicitly gives all rights to the states that it does not, itself, enumerate. I don't see where, in the constitution, defining marriage or making substances illegal are authorities given to the fedgov.

I know people who are just as disgusted with the idea of other people owning guns, and just as strident about preventing same, as I or any other freeper could be about male/male paring. And in some cities those anti gunners are an absolute majority. The beauty AND 'horror' of our constitution, in its most libertarian possible interpretation, is that the degree of reprehension felt by ANY party not DIRECTLY, PHYSICALLY affected by said situation simply does not matter. IF gays bug you, move to Montana; if guns bug you move to San Francisco:-).

Just my .02 - there is a difference, often missed on this board, between being broadminded and just not caring. *I* don't CARE about homosexuals. "Broadminded" people are concerned with 'equality', tolerance, diversity. Others, like me, just don't CARE. Like someone else's choice of religion - I don't want to know. Abortion is nearly always the wedge issue for Libertarians; the watershed being, of course, is it person or a lump of cells; persons deserve the full protection of the state, you can do anything you want to with a clump of cells.

In the end, I'd be happy to let the states decide, even though I know it would mean eventual defeat in many places. I'm happy to have it so that people vote with their feet as you suggest. Its the other side that is unwilling to allow such a compromise with their tactics of using the Courts to impose nationally what can only be won legitimately in a few states.

And so long as judicial supremacy persists, then one cannot genuinely claim to favor letting the states decide unless they also favor putting judges on the bench who are inclined to let the states decide. That is why so much of the Democrat talk of states rights is phony.