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.