Anderson Cooper Finally Comes Out: Shocked or Knew It All Along?

I'm not sure about the Libertarian Party's official stance on gay marriage, but they don't speak for me...or most libertarians. The Libertarian Party is actually considered somewhat irrelevant by most libertarians. ;)

To give you a better idea of how libertarians actually think, my personal stance is that marriage licenses need to be done away with altogether. Are you aware they were created in the US largely as a means of prohibiting interracial marriages? The very idea of being forced to ask an authority for permission to be married (a license) is repulsive, and licenses restrict people's right to be married by any institution they respect to do it, and to recognize (or choose not to recognize) anyone else's marriage as they please. I think we'd be in a much better place if marriage were a purely cultural institution (and joint ownership were a separate contract): You couldn't force people to recognize your marriage, but no one could force others not to recognize it either.

As it stands, the government has decided to nudge people toward heterosexual marriage with tax incentives and forced employment benefits, which disenfranchises both singles and gays alike...it's a huge mess of busy-bodies trying to socially engineer culture through coercive law. Culture in a free society should not be dictated from the top down, so I'd rather do away with that whole system. That said, when push comes to shove and I'm forced to take a stand inside on gay marriage assuming the existence of licenses, you should know I'm ultimately on your side on this issue: If the government is going to subsidize marriage and dictate its terms, it should act in fairness to gay couples as well. Paleoconservatives may think differently (they're typically an older crowd after all), but the vast majority of principled libertarians are more with you on this issue than against you.

When it comes to being in people's business, both Republicans and Democrats impose themselves on people's private lives in their own way: For instance, consider nanny state laws like New York's soft drink restrictions, drug laws with "bipartisan" support, arbitrary regulations imposing themselves into private contracts, the government stalking people to find out how much money they make to tax them...most of what government does is forcefully impose itself into people's private affairs and choices.

As far as states' rights are concerned, you're looking at them from a narrow point of view: It's true that some people seek to use them for precisely the reason you suggest, but the concept of decentralization of power is much more general, and it deserves much more thoughtful consideration than you're giving it. If you want to see examples of people trying to use states' rights for very different reasons, look at the Free State Project in New Hampshire...or if it doesn't fit your political inclinations enough to realize my point, look at the strongly leftist Vermont secessionist movement. The point of decentralization of power is that there's enough room in this country for everyone to find a place where they can be happy, if only the same homogeneous laws and social programs were not forced upon everyone. People in this country are at each other's throats so much because they're all vying for absolute domination over the whole country, but that all or nothing attitude is hardly necessary or productive...it's a recipe for ENDLESS social discord. That's why the Founders considered the individual states to be "laboratories of experimentation," which people could ultimately choose to accept or reject by voting with their feet. (That kind of competition is a lot harder in a world with greater centralization of power.)