Government shouldn’t tell you whom to marry.

The line expresses a libertarian-leaning view of civil marriage: that choosing a spouse is a personal decision and that the state should not restrict it based on identity or other non-harmful characteristics. In modern U.S. political discourse, the phrasing most often functions as an argument for marriage equality, reframing the issue away from moral or religious judgment and toward individual rights and limited government. It also implicitly distinguishes between government’s role in administering legal benefits and protections attached to marriage and the private, intimate choice of whom to marry—suggesting the former should not be used to police the latter.