Cruz endorsed by anti-gay National Organization for Marriage
Republican presidential contender Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) was endorsed today by the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage (NOM).
In its press release, NOM touted the ultra-conservative senator’s record on same-sex marriage: “’Sen. Ted Cruz is a proven champion for marriage and religious freedom and someone we can absolutely count on to fight to restore marriage to our nation's laws and defend the religious liberty of the tens of millions of Americans who believe that marriage is the union of one man and one woman,’ said Brian Brown, NOM's president.
“‘Sen. Cruz has not only signed NOM's presidential marriage pledge committing to take specific actions as president, but he has personally authored the pending federal marriage amendment to restore the right of states to define marriage as one man/one woman. Moreover, he has spoken out consistently and forcefully on the campaign trail as an advocate of true marriage. We are pleased to endorse him and will do everything in our power to support his election.’"
Cruz has consistently opposed same-sex marriage, and has roundly condemned the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision, which extended marriage equality to the entire United States.
He is relentless. Right Wing Watch reported this week, “In an interview with influential social conservative commentator Robert George on the Catholic television network EWTN last month, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said that the president should defy the Supreme Court’s ‘fundamentally illegitimate’ decision striking down bans on same-sex marriage, which he compared to ‘Nazi decrees.’”
“Saying that it is ‘profoundly wrong’ to refer to the gay marriage decision as the law of the land, Cruz said, ‘I think the decision was fundamentally illegitimate, it was lawless, it was not based on the Constitution.’”
When asked by anti-gay extremist Peter LaBarbera on a conservative conference call how he would reverse Obergefell, Cruz railed “against the landmark gay marriage decision as ‘one of the greatest threats to our democracy we had seen in modern times,’” reported Right Wing Watch in another article.
Cruz doesn’t restrict his anti-gay extremism to just talk. Earlier this year, he and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) introduced the “State Marriage Defense Act.” The bill “respects the definition of marriage held by the people of each state and protects states from the federal government’s efforts to force any other definition upon them. The bill will ensure the federal government gives the same deference to the 33 states that define marriage as the union between one man and one woman as it does to the 17 states that have chosen to recognize same-sex unions.”
The act was introduced in February, before the Obergefell decision in June, and appears to be intended to sideline the Supreme Court’s Windsor decision, which overturned parts of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).
In April, Cruz filed the “Restoration of Marriage Amendment” and the “Protect Marriage from the Courts Act,” “to guarantee the American people's right to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman,” according to the Senator’s press release. This is the amendment effort noted by NOM in its endorsement.
"The people should decide the issue of marriage, not the courts," said Sen. Ted Cruz. "The union of a man and a woman has been the building block of society since the dawn of history, and the people in numerous states have repeatedly affirmed that truth in their laws. Nothing in the Constitution prohibits that. In fact, it is inconceivable that when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, Americans would have understood they were sowing the seeds for courts to invalidate traditional marriage. And yet that is precisely what has happened. Judges have taken an unprecedented activist role to strike down state marriage laws. I am proud to introduce this legislation to uphold the institution of marriage and to safeguard the states' authority to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman."
The Gayly – December 9, 2015 @ 1:20 p.m.