He was a useless pro-abort. His first wife, Peggy, was a long-time (35 years or more) national director of Planned Barrenhood (as was Bush I's mother). Barry bragged about taking his daughter Susan to abort her child. To a very large extent, Goldwater was a brain dead knee jerk libertarian and in his last term a not very honest one.
He was in love with the notion of letting his descendants (several of them) feel free to practice lavenderism and mouth off in favor of it publicly.
He stabbed Ronaldus Maximus in 1968 and again in 1976.
I am ashamed to admit that Goldwater made me a Republican when I was a gullible teenager. I recovered soon enough and realized that Reagan was by far a better man and leader.
We have long since kissed (kicked?) dead Barry goodbye and good riddance. Materialist obsession with money is not a cause particularly worth fighting for much less "the one issue and one only." Fiscal tightwadism is an acceptable part of a broader coalition but not in the absence of a far more essential dedication to innocent human life, marriage, morality, a militant military policy, etc.
Goldwaterism is dead as a doornail and a good thing too.
Goldwater's exculpation and defense of his homosexual relatives didn't occur until later. If they'd been gay before he ran for President, Lyndon Johnson would have made sure that every deacon and tent-preacher in America knew about it -- he once told John Connally and the rest of his staff (as Robert Caro tells us) to circulate the rumor that senatorial primary campaign opponent "Coke" Stevenson was a pedophile. Big John bridled, "Lyndon, you know that isn't true!" "I know," replied Lyndon, getting a hateful, cynical-clever look on his ugly face, "I just want to hear him say it."
LBJ would have advertised Goldwater's relatives to the four corners of the earth. Goldwater, on the other hand, when LBJ aide Walter Jenkins was caught cruising in a D.C. men's room, wouldn't touch it. He took the high road and passed up a good opportunity to perforate LBJ's holier-than-thou, above-the-battle posture.
Social conservatives, btw, trace their involvement with the GOP back to a speech Goldwater made in May, 1964, during the primary campaign about what is called today the "family values" cluster.
So Goldwater was indeed a libertarian, as you say, but he also had a socially-conservative message that was at odds with what the selective "economic conservative" RiNO"s of today propagate as "the message" of the GOP.