Marriage is Not a Creation of the State (and We Should Keep it That Way) is a short post by Beau Weston. The quote he references comes from an essay by Serana Sugrue in The Meaning of Marriage (which I expect UPS to be leaving on my doorstep early next week.)
Sugrue has this wonderful sentence: "the sexual revolution is to the family what communism is to the market." In the case of the sexual revolution, the state was employed to dismantle the family in the name of greater individual control. Communism, on the other hand, used the state to dismantle the market in the name of greater social control. Both cases, though, ended up making the state more powerful over the institution it was "reforming." The sexual revolution did not just liberate individuals from the family – it left the state in control of defining the family.
Bingo!
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