In 1997, libertarian David Boaz wrote an article for Slate titled “Privatize Marriage: A Simple Solution to the Gay-Marriage Debate."
"When children or large sums of money are involved, an enforceable contract spelling out the parties' respective rights and obligations is probably advisable.
In 2002, Wendy McElroy echoed Boaz's business contract model in an essay for Ifeminists titled "It's Time to Privatize Marriage."
following the business model for privatization Jones writes: Subject to certain statutory constraints, businesspeople have long been free to form whatever sort of partnership they felt appropriate to their needs.
Let's take a lead from our gay and lesbian friends, who, without state marriage, often create domestic partnerships with financial autonomy and unity spelt out.
A heterosexual parallel: celebrate marriage with a religious or emotional ceremony—leave the state out of it—and create a business- or domestic-partner contract aligning the couple legally.
[8]As of 2015, the only known members of US Congress to support privatization of state marriage are Sen. Rand Paul,[9] Rep. Justin Amash (I–Michigan)[10] and Rep. Gary Palmer (R–Alabama).
[11] Pepperdine University law professor Douglas Kmiec told the Catholic News Agency that churches that do not accept same-sex marriage have a genuine concern that they be subject to penalties such as losing public benefits or receiving lawsuits.
He argued that the state should just allot people "civil licenses", with the terminology "marriage" left "as a religious concept" for groups to debate outside the scope of government.
In 2003 left-leaning political columnist and journalist Michael Kinsley wrote a second essay to appear in Slate on the topic.
Dershowitz proposes that civil-unions as a secular replacement for state sanctioned marriage, be extended to both same-sex and opposite-sex couples.
Under Dershowitz's conception of privatization, couples have a choice as to whether or not they wish to be married by a clergy willing to perform a marriage ceremony or to exclusively partake of secular/state-sanctioned civil unions.
Thaler and Sunstein also take up the topic in their co-authored 2008 book Nudge: Improving Decisions about Wealth, Health, and Happiness.
Opposition to marriage privatization, like its endorsement, is equally likely to be found arising from conservative or liberal sources[17][page needed] and a wide variety of objections are made.
"[18] Princeton professor Robert P. George has argued that marriage has an important cultural role in helping children develop into "basically honest, decent law-abiding people of goodwill—citizens—who can take their rightful place in society".
[12] This position is seconded by Jennifer Morse of the Witherspoon Institute, who argues that if literally anyone can define marriage as whatever they want, the state forfeits the ability to sufficiently secure the best interests of children.
[20] His National Review colleague Maggie Gallagher has also called privatization as a "fantasy" since "[t]here is scarcely a dollar that state and federal government spends on social programs that is not driven in large part by family fragmentation: crime, poverty, drug abuse, teen pregnancy, school failure, mental and physical health problems.