Rand Paul wants the federal government to stop overseeing marriage

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Presidential hopeful Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) spoke out for the first time Sunday on the Supreme Court's decision to grant same-sex couples the right to marry nationwide. He argued the federal government shouldn't oversee marriage at all, regardless of a given couple's genders, in a Time op-ed:

The Constitution is silent on the question of marriage because marriage has always been a local issue. Our founding fathers went to the local courthouse to be married, not to Washington, D.C. I've often said I don't want my guns or my marriage registered in Washington. [Time]

"There is a reason [our Constitution] was the first where rights came from our creator and therefore could not be taken away by government," Paul wrote.

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Julie Kliegman is a freelance writer based in New York. Her work has appeared in BuzzFeed, Vox, Mental Floss, Paste, the Tampa Bay Times and PolitiFact. Her cats can do somersaults.