Quote Originally Posted by professorscott View Post
Why we got here, by the way, underpins a key Libertarian argument about government in general. The difficulties here, and the reason these cases are filed, is that governments provide special benefits to people whom the government decides are "married", which do not equally apply to others. So in the adoption case at hand here,

1. Any single person can adopt.
2. Any married couple can adopt.
3. No two other people can adopt.

By what token does that make any logical sense at all?

Here is the Libertarian view on marriage.

1. If you belong to a religion that recognizes marriage as being any special kind of a thing, then marriage to you is whatever your religion says it is.
2. If you don't, then marriage is a private contract between two adults.
3. The state has absolutely no business in deciding who should get married, as it is either a religious matter or a private, contractual matter.
4. The state absolutely steps in it when it decides to provide benefits to certain classes of people based on their life situation, and the state should stop doing all of that.

Once you start providing benefits to only people in certain situations, you are certainly skating right on the edge of the equal protection clause, and may not be astonished when a judge calls you out on it.
Precisely my libertarian opinion.

The original problem wasn't government discrimination, it was government using marriage to provide unequal treatment. Stop it.