With respect to marriage, there are powerful arguments for privatization—for allowing private institutions, religious and otherwise, to do as they wish, subject to default rules and criminal prohibitions. We have argued that states should abolish “marriage” as such and rely on civil unions instead. If religious institutions want to restrict “marriage” to heterosexual couples, they should certainly be permitted to do exactly that. If such institutions want to limit divorce (that is, ending a “marriage”), they could do that too. The beauty of this proposal is that it would allow a wide range of
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