In a phone call last week with anti-gay right wing extremists,
Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz vowed he would fight against
gay rights.
The call was organized by E.W. Jackson, a failed GOP nominee for the
post of Virginia’s Lieutenant Governor, and anti-gay activist Peter
LaBarbera.
LaBarbera asked Cruz about “the gay agenda”, specifically what he would do to “reverse and neutralize the Obergefell
decision of the Supreme Court”, “end Obama’s policy of actually flying
the rainbow flag at U.S. embassies worldwide”, and halt “the Equality
Act, which I’m calling the Homosexual Superiority Act, in Congress.”
Cruz first addressed the question about the Supreme Court’s ruling on
gay marriage, comparing it to the Court’s ruling on abortion in Roe v. Wade, as Right Wing Watch points out:
“It is the decision reminiscent of Roe v. Wade
of a handful of unelected judges arrogantly and lawlessly decreeing the
authority to fundamentally change our country and to tear down the
foundations of the country,” Cruz added.
He also criticized Republicans who decided to “surrender” to the Supreme Court and treat Obergefell as the “settled law of the land.”
“My response to this decision was that it
was illegitimate, it was lawless, it was utterly contrary to the
Constitution and that we should fight to defend marriage on every
front,” he said, before promoting constitutional amendments to overturn
the ruling and put justices up for retention elections, along with
legislation “to strip the federal courts of jurisdiction over challenges
to marriage.”
Cruz also said he wants “to strip the federal courts of jurisdiction
over challenges to marriage.” He added, “we will not use the federal
government to enforce this lawless decision that is a usurpation of the
authority of we the people in this country.”
On LGBT rights as they pertain to military service, Cruz remarked
that he was “just hearing terrible things” about the military being
“beset with these new LGBT rules”:
“You look at the military and one of the
things we’ve seen is morale in the military under the Obama
administration has plummeted, and it has plummeted because you have a
commander-in-chief that doesn’t support our soldiers and sailors and
airmen and marines, you have a commander-in-chief that doesn’t stand up
against our enemies, that won’t even acknowledge or say the words
‘radical Islamic terrorism’ and you have a commander-in-chief that
treats the military as a cauldron for social experimentation. He’s more
interested in promoting homosexuality in the military than he is in
defeating our enemy.
For example, the military is now focused
on trying to promote transgendered [sic] soldiers. The role of the
military is not to be some left-wing social experiment. The reason we
have the brave men and women who sign up as service men and women to
defend this nation is to stand for our values, to protect our safety and
security, to protect innocent men and women and to stand up and defeat
our enemies, and I would stop the shameless politicizing of our military
to push a left-wing agenda that is contrary to the values and contrary
to who we are as an American people and a nation founded on
Judeo-Christian values.”
LaBarbera praised Cruz for his anti-gay advocacy, calling him a “real
believer” who is “not one of these candidates who is going to say, ‘I
believe in traditional marriage but I would attend a gay wedding if it
was a friend of mine.’” That being a not-so-thinly veiled reference to
Ohio Governor John Kasich.
