Paul wants government out of marriage business

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is ending his silence over the Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage decision, calling for the government to get out of the marriage game for good.

{mosads}The libertarian-leaning presidential hopeful walks a fine line in a new column in Time magazine between his support of traditional marriage and his calls for limited government by arguing that the government shouldn’t be licensing marriage in the first place.

“The government should not prevent people from making contracts but that does not mean that the government must confer a special imprimatur upon a new definition of marriage,” he writes.

Paul warns that the Supreme Court could “involve the police power of the state in churches, schools, church hospitals” if those religious institutions don’t comply with the court’s recent decision.

“I acknowledge the right to contract in all economic and personal spheres, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a danger that a government that involves itself in every nook and cranny of our lives won’t now enforce definitions that conflict with sincerely felt religious convictions of others,” he writes.

“I for one will stand ready to resist any intrusion of government into the religious sphere.”

Paul spoke out for the first time since the Supreme Court’s landmark decision to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide on Friday. That tight 5-4 decision brought together the liberal-leaning justices with Justice Anthony Kennedy, who is often the swing vote in close cases.

GOP presidential hopefuls slammed the decision as judicial overreach in statements, many quoting the fiery dissenting opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia, in which he warned that the decision “robs the People” of their freedom to govern.

Paul’s opinion piece quoted Justice Clarence Thomas’s dissenting opinion. Thomas argues that “liberty has long been understood as individual freedom from governmental action, not as a right to a particular governmental entitlement.”