Texas Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) grabbed headlines and began trending in social media Sunday night and Monday morning for articulating his very predictable and long-standing position regarding the Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage ruling back in 2015:
“I think that decision was clearly wrong when it was decided,” Senator Cruz said on his podcast, which was released this past Sunday. “It was the court overreaching.”
He continued:
“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, other states were moving to allow civil partnerships. There were different standards that the states were adopting.”
Concerned press immediately sprung into action.
“Ted Cruz’s stance on same-sex marriage raises a huge red flag,” wrote CNN.
USA Today, Newsweek, NBC News, Axios and countless other outlets followed suit, pushing out stories featuring Senator Cruz’s statements.
Only Senator Cruz’s statements aren’t really new news at all – but instead a restatement of his reaction seven years ago this past June. After the High Court ruled in Obergefell, Cruz wrote in National Review on June 26, 2015:
Not only are the Court’s opinions untethered to reason and logic, they are also alien to our constitutional system of limited and divided government. By redefining the meaning of common words, and redesigning the most basic human institutions, this Court has crossed from the realm of activism into the arena of oligarchy.
This week’s opinions are but the latest in a long line of judicial assaults on our Constitution and the common-sense values that have made America great. During the past 50 years, the Court has condemned millions of innocent unborn children to death, banished God from our schools and public squares, extended constitutional protections to prisoners of war on foreign soil, authorized the confiscation of property from one private owner to transfer it to another, and has now required all Americans to purchase a specific product, and to accept the redefinition of an institution ordained by God and long predating the formation of the Court.
Enough is enough.
The time has come, therefore, to recognize that the problem lies not with the lawless rulings of individual lawless justices, but with the lawlessness of the Court itself. The decisions that have deformed our constitutional order and have debased our culture are but symptoms of the disease of liberal judicial activism that has infected our judiciary. A remedy is needed that will restore health to the sick man in our constitutional system.
To be fair, media pounced with the tenacity of a tiger on the story partly because Senator Cruz had the temerity to agree with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ reference in Dobbs to revisiting previous court decisions. In reversing Roe and sending the matter of abortion back to the states, Justice Thomas noted the Obergefell case was “demonstrably erroneous.”
He’s right.
Jim Obergefell, the gentleman at the center of the fateful decision back in 2015, not surprisingly took umbrage with Justice Thomas’ concurrence, accusing him of “imposing his twisted sense of morality” on the nation. “What an incredibly dark day for women in our nation.”
You know you’re living in an upside-down, inside-out era when a Supreme Court justice who votes to uphold a law that protects innocent life is the one accused of perpetuating immorality.
It brings to mind the words of Isaiah 5:20:
Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!
Or maybe all the energy behind Senator Cruz’s reiteration of his 2015 position is nothing more than acknowledging something increasingly rare in Washington these days – a politician who holds steady and resolute in the face of the fierce winds of mockery, badgering and bullying.
