I agree with E Pluribus (above). Reagan would probably have been similar to Goldwater on this matter. Both were kind and tolerant individuals, but at the same time realistic.
The issue of making homosexual relationships official substitutes for actual marriage, is somewhat different. It is a “push” issue, being used for political purposes by pressure groups and by the D party in order to try to peal off another constituent group. This is why conflict is necessary for them, when the instinct of most of us is to seek solutions, and get along with all sorts of people we meet along life’s way.
If homosexual marriage is approved, there will be temporary jubilation among activists homosexuals, but then they will have to go back to their lives, and will have the same problems as they did before, both as “gays” as as people. Activists believe that “great advances” will make everyone happier, but it does not work that way. So who gains by all this? Only the political coalition-makers.
And the country will suffer because there will be confusion in the social life of the people, and lots of legal snags. The overall happiness of everyone will not be advanced.
You can bet your bottom dollar that BMG's rabid opposition to Reagan in 1976 when Reagan challenged Feckless Ford was rooted in Ford's enthusiasm for abortion and Reagan's opposition. On that basis, Ayn Rand endorsed Ford over Reagan in her Ayn Rand Letter. Goldwater, Ayn Rand and Gerald and Betty Ford, as social issue revolutionaries, have no legitimate place in the post-Reagan GOP and conservative movement.
On homosexuality, Reagan opposed the Briggs Amendment in California which would have banned homosexuals from employment as teachers in government schools, noting that if the issue were sexual abuse of minors, no such abuse whether homosexual or heterosexual was acceptable and all such behavior was criminal, and that, in the absence of such criminality, the sexual inclinations of the teacher were irrelevant. That is a loooooooong way from approving homosexuality much less homosexual "marriage."
While governor of California, Reagan signed a somewhat permissive abortion bill and changed his mind completely within a year and even went personally door to door as governor circulating initiative petitions for the attempted repeal of the statute he had signed.
The posthumous attempt to revise Ronaldus Maximus into an amoral or immoral knee-jerk libertinian on moral issues is a disservice to the great man's earned reputation. Note that the sourced article is in the New York Slimes and the source is a largely discredited Patti Reagan who NEVER supported her father politically but now tries to emerge (genetically???) as an expert on his ideas, giving her aid and comfort to his enemies.