Amen. An entertaining polemic that discusses some of these issues is "Against Love" by Laura Kipnis.
It seems to me that conservatives - if they really do stand for "small government" - would oppose the concept of legalized marriages, in which we are all expected to submit our personal relationship for approval by the government. If that's not intrusive state power, what is? Yet even the most diehard libertarians rarely question the validity of state-sanctioned marriage.
On the contrary, it's almost exclusively die hard libertarians criticizing state sanctioned marriage.
The main reason more libertarians (as opposed to good/small govt conservatives) don't criticize state sanctioned marriage is that most are unaware of how large the subsidies to married couples actually are. Many people think marriage is nothing more than a standardized contract between two people.
It seems to me that conservatives - if they really do stand for "small government" - would oppose the concept of legalized marriages, in which we are all expected to submit our personal relationship for approval by the government. If that's not intrusive state power, what is? Yet even the most diehard libertarians rarely question the validity of state-sanctioned marriage.