Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, a Tea Party favorite and possible 2016 presidential candidate, has said that the gay marriage debate should continue at the state level.

In an interview on CBN's The Brody File, Paul, a libertarian-leaning Republican who is opposed to marriage equality, predicted that supporters of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) are going to “lose that battle.”

“If we keep it that way, maybe we can still have the discussion go on without making the decision go all the way one way or all the way the other way,” Paul told host David Brody. “Because I think, right now, if we say, 'Oh, we're only going to have, we believe in a federally mandated one-man-one-woman marriage,' we're going to lose that battle, because the country's going the other way right now.”

Paul added that allowing states to decide offers an opportunity for conservatives to change the environment in their favor.

“If we were to say each state can decide, I think a good 25, 30 states still do believe in traditional marriage, and maybe if we allow the debate to go on for another couple of decades, and see if we can still win back the hearts and minds of people,” he said. (The video is embedded on this page. Visit our video library for more videos.)