Ted Cruz
The other day we wondered whether anti-gay Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who’s likely running for president in 2016, would support a federal constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, given that he seems to think marriage is a state issue — at least when it suits his argument.
Not surprisingly, Cruz’s office never responded to our inquiry, but we may have gotten our answer anyway in the form of an interview Cruz did with the Christan Broadcasting Network’s David Brody this week. In the interview, Cruz warned that marriage equality in the U.S. threatens religious freedoms.
“If you look at other nations that have gone down the road towards gay marriage,” Cruz said, “that’s the next step of where it gets enforced. It gets enforced against Christian pastors who decline to perform gay marriages, who speak out and preach biblical truths on marriage, that has been defined elsewhere as hate speech, as inconsistent with the enlightened view of government.”
It’s sad but not surprising that Cruz would resort to such an over-the-top scare tactic in an effort to pander to evangelical voters. Can he point to a single case from any of the 13 states where same-sex marriage is legal in which a pastor has been prosecuted for refusing to perform same-sex weddings? Of course not, and that’s partly because marriage-equality laws are being specifically and carefully written to protect religious freedoms. The problem is that Cruz’s definition of religious freedom has nothing to do with the First Amendment. To him, religious freedom means the “freedom” of anti-gay zealots like himself to impose their religion on other people.
Watch Cruz’s comments to Brody below.
