This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, February 8, 2011.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Libertarian's may wish to privatize all aspects of marriage,

but doing so might mean even greater intervention into all areas. of Nicky is author of the new analysis, Marriage Against the State toward a new view of civil marriage.

We spoke last week.

Marriage rights as we understand them or talk about them are sometimes granted by the government or sometimes the product of just

shared social understandings.

Sometimes they're a hybrid of the two.

And the suggestion I make in this policy analysis is let's look at the things that marriage

does individually.

It does a lot of different separate things and it's important to look at them separately

and consider them one at a time.

Okay, in the modern world, what does it do?

Marriage creates a set of understandings about child custody and child support.

It creates a set of tax consequences for the married couple. It creates a set of legal

obligations for the dissolution of the relationship.

It creates a protection against the testimony of your spouse.

You don't, you're never forced to testify against your spouse.

It does a lot of different things.

In fact, it's been estimated that there are more than 1,100 different federal-only rights and privileges of marriage.

At the state level, there are more. Why is it important then to look at... and Well, some of them are what we might call negative rights, and some of them are positive or welfare rights.

And if you are a Libertarian like me, you might be more favorable to the negative rights and less favorable or more critical of the positive

...