If Rand Paul was to have his way entirely, his stance would be for the government to stay out of marriage altogether, straight or gay. That is to say, Rand Paul

If Rand Paul was to have his way entirely, his stance would be for the government to stay out of marriage altogether, straight or gay. That is to say, Rand Paul does NOT oppose gay marriage, he oppose marriage being a LEGAL CONCEPT at all. You should be free to call yourself being married to anyone, and you don't need any recognition to do that. Now, of course he won't get his way with that, so the next best things is to localize the effect of the law: if you dislike the law of where you're staying, it would be a lot easier if you can just move to the next city with a different set of laws that you agree with. That's basically the overarching ideal of libertarian: liberty and freedom of choice trumps all. There aren't much to choose if the law is federal (or if it's Earth-wide, to take to the extreme). In the US, that would for practical purposes mean advocate for State law over federal law. There are many things to dislike about libertarian and Rand Paul (his version of libertarian is kind of Objectivism, which is quite ugly). But to characterize Rand Paul's stance as "opposing to gay marriage" is misleading. Calling him "opposing to X", with X being some perceived good thing is (most of the time) attacking a strawman. He's pretty much just opposing to making more law, in general. Edit: you said that "It absolves him of the responsibility of taking a stand on any of those issues" in one of the comment above. Yes that's the whole point of his ideal: it doesn't matter what his stance is, you're free to do whatever you want.