Miron: Government Needs to Divorce the Marriage Business

Jeffrey A. Miron, a senior lecturer and director of undergraduate studies at Harvard University and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, has made an argument similar to the one I have been making for about 5 years on the issue of gay marriage and the role of government in marriages.  To summarize his argument:

• Government should exit the marriage business.
• Private contracts for raising children, for the division of property, inheritance, and other purposes should be available as components to a bundled contract open to all couples.
• Opposite-sex and same-sex couples would have the same opportunities and be treated equivalently.
• Government would still define the default rules of a contract.

The main limitation of his argument is that he limits domestic partnership contracts to a couple.  There is no more reason for doing this than there would be to limit a small business partnership to a couple.