Ted Cruz
A spokeswoman for U.S. Senate candidate Ted Cruz’s law firm distanced the firm from his campaign on Tuesday when asked about the firm’s perfect score on gay rights and Cruz’s staunchly anti-gay political positions.
“Mr. Cruz’s campaign is separate from the firm as a company,” said Jen Costa, manager of public and media relations for Philadelphia-based Morgan, Lewis & Bockus LLP. “I have no comment on his campaign.”
The tea party-backed Cruz is a partner in Morgan, Lewis & Bockius’ Houston office, where he leads the firm’s U.S. Supreme Court and national appellate litigation practice, according to his campaign website.
Morgan, Lewis & Bockus received a perfect score of 100 percent on the Human Rights Campaign’s 2012 Corporate Equality Index, which rates employers according to their LGBT-related policies and practices.
Costa added that “unfortunately no one is available to speak to our HRC ranking at this time.”
Cruz, who faces Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst in a runoff for the GOP nomination July 31, repeatedly attacked former Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert during the primary for marching in the city’s gay Pride Parade.
On his website, Cruz boasts that as Texas’ solicitor general he helped block a gay Beaumont couple from obtaining a divorce from their Vermont civil union. Cruz’s website also touts a letter he wrote in support of the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act — as well as court briefs he filed defending the Boy Scouts’ ban on gays and military recruiters’ access to college campuses regardless of the anti-gay “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.
“It’s a shame that when the law firm that he’s a partner at has demonstrated a commitment to LGBT equality, that he has chosen to go the route of archaic bigotry and homophobia,” said Paul Guequierre, a spokesman for HRC.
Despite his anti-gay positions, Cruz has also been criticized for accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from a gay donor, PayPal founder Peter Thiel.
