He Knew This Would Come Back To Bite Him
It finally happened. While Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz was speaking at a campaign stop in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, the question about his attempted sex toy ban finally surfaced.
A Conservative’s Conservative?
Information about Ted Cruz’s past revealed that the Texas senator once defended the state’s ban on the use of sex toys while he was the Solicitor General. The story went viral on social media, and Cruz was forced to respond to the possibility that he could attempt to ban the use of sex toys if he’s elected president.
According to blasting news, in 2007 Cruz issued an 83-page brief defending a law that banned any device “useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs,” citing the state’s moral code. The senator from the Lone Star State said he approved of the law because it was “protecting public morals” against what he described in the brief as “interests in sexual gratification.” Though the law was later overturned, current Texas governor and former Attorney General, Greg Abbott, attempted to appeal the decision but was not successful. Cruz was asked about his anti-sex toy defense during a recent interview with WABC.
Host Curtis Sliwa pressed Cruz on the issue, going as far as asking Cruz that if he was in the White House, would he ban “the sale of sexual toys, dildos, or anything that sexually stimulates you?” Embarrassed, Cruz was forced to respond, stating, “Look, of course not, it’s a ridiculous question.” Attempting to elaborate, Cruz said, “What people do in their own private time with themselves is their own business.” While Cruz claims that an individual’s sex life is their own “private” business, this hasn’t stopped him in regards to his opposition to homosexuality and same-sex marriage.
As David Corn’s Mother Earth News article pointed out, Cruz, before he was elected to the Senate, co-authored a legal brief in 2007, urging the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold “a Texas law outlawing the sale and promotion of supposedly obscene devices.” The brief compared the use of sex toys to “hiring a willing prostitute or engaging in consensual bigamy,” and it equated advertising these products with the commercial promotion of prostitution. The legal filing also declared, “There is no substantive-due-process right to stimulate one’s genitals for non-medical purposes unrelated to procreation or outside of an interpersonal relationship.”
One of the more popular clips from Cruz’s brief pertained to the claim that Cruz’s legal team had maintained:
There is no substantive-due-process right to stimulate one’s genitals for non-medical purposes unrelated to procreation or outside of an interpersonal relationship.” That is, the pursuit of such happiness had no constitutional standing. And the brief argued there was no “right to promote dildos, vibrators, and other obscene devices.” The plaintiffs, it noted, were “free to engage in unfettered noncommercial speech touting the uses of obscene devices,” but not speech designed to generate the sale of these items.”
While acknowledging that Ted has argued against personal sexual liberties in the past, according to Snopes, the most that one can make of this issue is to say that “Ted Cruz once, in accordance with his job duties and the requirements of his office, oversaw lawyers who were obliged to argue in favor of an existing Texas state law that prohibited the sale of ‘obscene devices’ which included some sexual aids.”
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sources: Wikipedia, MSNBC, Mother Earth News, Snopes