Go Army!
When the state tries to meddle with the individual building blocks of society, it invariably creates dependency, unfairness and ruin. Worse, it creates the perception that doling out candy is the role of the government, which makes citizens swing at it like kids chasing a pinata. They all try and hit it harder and harder, getting more and more goodies to drop. Which has led us to where we are now.
The state is inextricably bound in marriage law. How to you propose to untie that knot? And is it a good idea to untie that knot? The destruction of the urban family by Great Society programs would seem to be undenaible testimony that the state has an interest in encouraging marriage to promote individual responsibility and liberty for those who are bound by tax law to support the progeny of those who forsake marriage and family.
Do you honestly think that America will dissolve the welfare state? Because without doing that unentangling the state from marriage is the same pipe dream that open border Libertarianism congruent with a welfare state is. Insane.
Your point about untying the knot is exactly right. As I was finishing post 101, it occurred to me that the state is so deep in so many places it should not be, it often makes doing the right thing dangerous.
The welfare state is ending, precisely because the government took it up in the first place. It tinkered with forces it should have left alone, and now has created a demand of dependency that it can't possibly satisfy.
Whenever the state chooses to hand out free stuff for votes, it starts the timer on it's own destruction. That's fine if you're not going to be around for when the bomb goes off (Thanks, LBJ), but, as you mentioned, we're now inextricably bound to the problem. It's a structural defect, and one that is destroying us.
So, I don't know that there is a solution, on than to make the problem clear enough for whoever manages to reboot America 2.0 to look back on and see as a warning. "Thou shalt not use the power of the State to remake the Family.", or some such.