Abolish Marriage Licensure - And Stop Collecting Data

In the continuing saga of the state sticking its nose into marriage, three couples in Virginia are suing the state government because the state refused to issue them marriage licenses -- because the plaintiffs refused to state their races on their license application.

Instead of fighting it in court, the Commonwealth should make the suit moot by immediately eliminating the marriage license system and all associated requirements, benefits, restrictions, and regulations.

Every state, not just Virginia, collects demographic information for marriage licenses.  Even if they don't ask directly on the form, all states require a state-issued ID at some point in the process, and those demographic entries are either shown in the clear on the ID itself or it's behind it on the DMV database -- which means that the state marriage license database has all of that as well.

Libertarians support marriage equality -- because we favor the immediate abolition of marriage licensure, for all of the same reasons we favor the elimination of all other forms of state permission slips.  Libertarians regard licensure as the government taking away a right all individuals have, and then selling them that right back as a privilege.

Americans have been fighting this battle over the details of how government permission slips are issued and to whom for decades now.  It's time to bring that battle to a close by eliminating all marriage license laws.

Interestingly, Republicans have picked up the idea from Libertarians, and have recently eliminated marriage licensure in Alabama and introduced repeal bills in other states.

Who or how many somebody loves is none of the government's business.

Libertarians support separation of marriage and state. Government marriage license regimes were introduced as tools of control like any other license, and therefore we call for their immediate abolition.  No free individual should be expected to obtain a "permission slip" from the state in order to marry.

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Vote Libertarian * 800-ELECT-US * http://www.LP.org
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Written by Marc Montoni <AMCAmbassador@gmail.com>, May, 2019.  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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