Then came Ted Cruz. What can anyone say about this political cowboy who delights in shaking up controversial issues that his peers often steer their steers clear of? The senator from Texas picks fights for grins and giggles, but above all else, he isn’t afraid to say what his constituents are thinking but won’t, and his honest forbidden fruit messages resonate in the hearts of more voters than he’s given credit for.
Cruz doesn’t care if an issue is current or in the archives. If he didn’t like its outcome he’s going to publicly whine about it over and over again until someone, anyone, gets annoyed enough to listen. It’s a clever and somewhat humorous strategy to those in the know. Which you now are.
The latest relic he’s blowing the dust off of is same-sex marriage. He said the Supreme Court was “clearly wrong” in 2015 when they gave it their legal seal of approval.
It’s known as the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling and Cruz recently beat that dead horse in a Youtube podcast. “Obergefell, like Roe v. Wade, ignored two centuries of our nation’s history. Marriage was always an issue that was left to the states. We saw states before Obergefell, some states were moving to allow gay marriage, [sic] other states were moving to allow civil partnerships. There were different standards that the states were adopting,” he said.
Cruz was more or less okay with leaving the issue up to individual states. Understanding how some are more progressive or conservative than others, why not leave the decision up to the residents who live there since who could know better what they want?
He considers it a slap in the face when the highest court in the land decided, ‘No, we know better than you guys do, and now every state must, must sanction and permit gay marriage.’” The bill would have never passed in his great state of Texas had it had a say in the matter.
Cruz still shudders at the abuse of power. “I think that decision was clearly wrong when it was decided,” he said. ‘It was the court overreaching.”
Cruz is merely repeating what he’s heard echoing off the inner chamber walls from the majority of his fellow Republicans. If SCOTUS is willing to overturn Roe v. Wade at its sole discretion, which passed in 1973, they can certainly re-evaluate Obergefell v. Hodges which wasn’t passed until 2015. Fair is fair.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, for one, gave the idea a thumbs up which may have paved a path for the Republican-controlled SCOTUS to follow. Buckle up. It’ll be a wild ride if…
Thomas made his stance clear even prior to Cruz’s podcast. He’s in favor of giving all control back to states in terms of restrictions on contraceptives, same-sex marriages, and sodomy bans.
“Because any substantive due process decision is ‘demonstrably erroneous,’” Thomas said in a written opinion, “we have a duty to ‘correct the error’ established in those precedents.”
Cruz, Thomas, and other high-ranking Republicans would like nothing better than to see Roe v. Wade reinstated and Obergefell v. Hodges repealed.
Here comes the but… Unlike the demons of the Democratic Party who seek total control of every living thing, these conservative lawmakers are fair people whose only agenda is to put the power back in the hands of we the people where it belongs, and what’s so wrong with that?
So we say to Mr. Cruz. Whine, fuss, throw tantrums and turn blue in the face if you have to. Your message is being heard. Kudos.