” All of the legal “problems” you raise to the “loss” of government marriage are straw men, and you know it. “
Broken homes are not a strawman, but a top source of juvenile social pathology.
“You also know that government marriages are relatively new”
Wrong. Marriages have been defined in law since ancient times, including the laws of Justinian in 550AD.
Such ignorance and misstatement of law and history has led you far astray.
“All we need is the acknowledgement by the government - through laws that compel it - that it must honor any marriage contract drafted between two people “
We have that today, so what is so objectionable about the status quo, a status quo defined in law for 1500 years?
The urge to destroy a standard, moral understanding of marriage serves what end? No end really, except further fraying of the social fabric, already already quite frayed by the last generational trends in ‘defining deviancy down’.
“Natural Rights - they’re not just a good idea, they’re the law.” LOL, reread your Locke, then, on the relations of parents and children, etc. Marriage is an institution, not a right, and one designed to protect children’s rights from abuse of parents, while giving parents rights to direct children. The Left has for 50 years tried to undermine that traditional relationship, and clueless Libertarians swallow dumb and incorrect arguments in giving away the store.
There is no ‘right’ to polygamy. there is no right marry just anyone you want (not your sister, not your uncle, not 3 guys names Bob, and not your goldfish). Nor is there a ‘right’ to destroy the definition of marriage in law.
Homosexual judges might try to change the rules, but there is no justifiable right to back up those rule changes, just judicial fiat and the pressure from activists hellbent on an agenda that is at odds with protecting what’s good about marriage.
Coulter is right. Abolition of marriage is kooky idea based on misreading history, law and philosophy. gay marriage is a bad idea, but this idea is 10X worse.
No-fault divorce and bad "family law" (which is actually anti-family) in America has done as much to create broken homes as anything. GOVERNMENT has probably done more to create broken homes than any other single entity.
The "marriage" of two people of the same sex is an abomination, but the answer is to allow people to freely, peacefully, discriminate against open homosexuality as easily as they can now discriminate in favor of it. Refuse to rent to "married" gay couples, refuse to do business with them, ostracize them peacefully in every way IF YOU CHOOSE, in business and in your private life. Most people would do just that, if they could. But the way it is today, you get in trouble with the law if you exercise that God-given right. And Romney, whom Coulter once enthusiastically supported, WAS ALL FOR THAT KIND OF GOVERNMENT, one that would punish people for free, peaceful, discrimination against open homosexuality in their workplaces, schools, civic organizations, communities, etc.
Broken homes ARE a strawman in this discussion -- Talisker is right. Less government PROMOTES MORE MORALITY. More government, no matter how well intended, restricts people from making moral choices in how they discriminate freely and peacefully against what they consider immoral and the government doesn't.
Coulter is just like a liberal in her automatic dismissal of libertarianism -- she, like Romney, is a Republican statist, and big government is fine as long as it's her kind of big government.
I expect the one Libertarian "friend" she's talking about is Larry Elder, though he switched parties to Republican some time ago. I wonder what she thinks of libertarians Thomas Sowell (he's said he identifies more with libertarians than the Republican party) and Walter Williams? I wonder what she thinks of Reagan's telling Reason magazine in 1975: "... I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism ... I can't say that that I agree with all the things that the present group who call themselves Libertarians in the sense of a party say .... But again, I stand on my statement that I think that libertarianism and conservatism are travelling the same path."
Well said!