Lamar W. Hankins : Ted Cruz's Opposition to Liberty

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Photo by Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images.

States’ rights trump the Constitution:
Ted Cruz’s opposition to liberty

Cruz’s homophobia is so pronounced that he has criticized other politicians for being too accepting of gays.

By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / June 27, 2013

[The Supreme Court issued rulings on two landmark marriage equality cases on Wednesday, June 26, striking down a federal law that denies federal benefits to same-sex couples married in states that recognize gay marriage and allowing a lower court ruling that struck down California's same-sex marriage ban to stand.]

It was gratifying to read of Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, declaring that she has changed her mind about her opposition to gay marriage. Her change of heart is based on the right to privacy, support for encouraging committed families, and recognition that denying first-class citizenship to people because of their choice of life partners also denies such people the liberty promised by the constitution.

Murkowski did not explain her reasons exactly as I have explained them above, but my comments fairly interpret what she said. She does not believe that religions or religious beliefs should control our civil rights. But she does not suggest that any church or religious group be required to recognize same-sex marriages:

As a Catholic, I see marriage as a valued sacrament that exists exclusively between a man and a woman. Other faiths and belief systems feel differently about this issue -- and they have every right to. Churches must be allowed to define marriage and conduct ceremonies according to their rules, but the government should not tell people who they have a right to marry through a civil ceremony.

Murkowski was moved by the experience of a same-sex couple in Alaska who adopted a family of four children so that they could stay together. Murkowski recognized that the two women are denied rights that all heterosexual married couples enjoy and found such a “second-class existence” intolerable when viewed from the perspective of the Republican and Christian values she espouses.

This view seems imminently reasonable, so why have only two other Republican United States senators agreed with her -- Sen. Rob Portman (Ohio) and Sen. Mark Kirk (Illinois), who announced earlier this year that they too support same-sex marriage in the civil context? That leaves 43 Republicans in the U.S. Senate who oppose the freedom to marry the adult of one’s choice. (According to an ABC News report, nearly 50 Democrats in the senate support or do not oppose same-sex marriage.)

There is no fiercer Republican opponent of same-sex marriage than Texas’s Sen. Ted Cruz, who many believe is the future of the Republican Party. Cruz claims to be what I would call the “liberty senator,” except that the only liberty he consistently supports is liberty that his Tea Party constituents embrace. Cruz tries to finesse his position on same sex marriage by arguing that the matter is, under the Constitution, left to the states to decide:

The Constitution leaves it to the states to decide upon marriage and I hope the Supreme Court respects centuries of tradition and doesn’t step into the process of setting aside state laws that make the definition of marriage.

But Cruz is disguising his abhorrence of gays with his paean to states’ rights. In his view, the personal freedom to decide whom to marry is not a constitutional guarantee for all, but a privilege to be doled out by the states to those fortunate enough to live in one of the 11 states that permit same sex marriage.

Cruz seems not to remember that the Supreme Court’s decision in Loving v. Virginia, which overturned that state’s law against interracial marriage, was based on the U.S. Constitution. In its ruling, the court found that Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute violated both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

If Cruz’s limited liberty ideas had been in effect in 1965, the Supreme Court might not have allowed women to have access to birth control, which had been denied by the state of Connecticut. The court ruled that the right to privacy and due process entitled women to use birth control if they choose to do so. States cannot deny access to birth control under our Constitution.

For Cruz, states’ rights seem to trump the Constitution, at least whenever his political and religious views are affected. Fortunately for the rest of us, the Supreme Court has usually recognized that the rights and liberties guaranteed by the Constitution protect us all from state legislators and voters who would deny to some those rights and liberties we should all treasure, and from which we should all benefit.

Cruz’s homophobia is so pronounced that he has criticized other politicians for being too accepting of gays. Former Dallas mayor Republican Tom Leppert twice marched in Dallas' gay pride parade, actions that Cruz finds offensive: "When a mayor of a city chooses twice to march in a parade celebrating gay pride that's a statement and it's not a statement I agree with."

At the federal level, Cruz has defended marriage between one man and one woman as the fundamental building block of society. But the difference between same-sex marriage and heterosexual marriage is not obvious. In both cases, the couples can nurture children, work, engage in religious preferences together or separately, own property together, and live together in every other way.

But because same-sex marriage partners are denied the automatic extension of the privileges of marriage, such as property rights, medical decision-making, inheritance, and the right to make decisions on the death of the other partner, same-sex partners are far from equal to their heterosexual counterparts.

A couple married in Vermont who move to Texas, for example, will not enjoy the “full faith and credit” of Vermont’s law permitting same-sex marriage if that couple seeks to divorce -- that is, the couple cannot divorce in Texas, their then legal residence. This is a situation Cruz is proud to have helped create.

His campaign website crows,

When a Beaumont state court granted a divorce to two homosexual men who had gotten a civil union in Vermont, Cruz, under the leadership of Attorney General Greg Abbott, intervened in defense of the marriage laws of the State of Texas, which successfully led to the court judgment being vacated.

It is counter-productive to a civil society to allow such chaos to prevail. The couple will have to re-establish residence in Vermont in order to have a court supervise the dissolution of their marriage and division of property. If children were involved, the consequences would be even more troubling -- the children would be held hostage to the religious beliefs of Ted Cruz, as well as his narrow and limited definition of liberty.

Cruz ignores the Full Faith and Credit clause (Article IV, Section 1) of the U.S. Constitution. Understood in plain English, this clause means that the various states must recognize the legislative acts, public records, and judicial decisions of the other states in our union. With the Full Faith and Credit Clause, the Constitution drafters wanted to do two things: unify this country and preserve the autonomy of the states.

If the Supreme Court applied this provision to same-sex marriages created in one state when the parties have moved to another state, it would not require any state to allow same-sex marriage, but it would require every state to behave toward all married couples residing in their state in a legally equal fashion. If a quickie Las Vegas opposite-sex marriage can be enforced in Texas, the sanctity of marriage is not harmed by enforcing in Texas a same-sex marriage entered in Vermont.

Such an outcome may be a part of the “gay rights agenda” Ted Cruz loves to oppose. I don’t know because I don’t know what the “gay rights agenda” is. If by gay rights, one means that people who are gay should be treated without discrimination under our laws, then I favor such an “agenda.”

This is not a grant of special rights to gay people, but merely an effort to treat gays with the same respect our laws provide to all who suffer discrimination because of their status. Opposing discrimination against gays for being gay fulfills the promise of liberty, something Cruz claims to champion.

But as we have learned over the past two years or so, Cruz doesn’t like liberty as much as he likes talking about liberty. Cruz’s liberty reminds me of Anatole France’s idea of equality under the law, which “forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.” Cruz is all for liberty that allows gays as well as straights to marry someone of the opposite sex. He thinks that makes us all equal.

[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins. Read more articles by Lamar W. Hankins on The Rag Blog.]

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Lamar W. Hankins : Talking Guns with Wayne

Cartoon by Steve Breen / San Diego Union Tribune. Image from The English Blog.

The liberty to live:
Talking guns with Wayne

Wayne seemed to be growing frustrated with our discussion. 'I don’t want kids killed,' he said, 'but I don’t want anyone taking away my right to own an AR-15 semi-automatic.'

By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / May 6, 2013

I had a talk with my old friend Wayne the other day. We hadn’t seen each other for a while, so we had a lot of catching up to do. After we talked about our work and compared how many fish each of us had caught on our last fishing trips, talk turned to politics. Wayne owns several guns, so it was no surprise to me that he had gun control on his mind.

Wayne said that he had been following the new gun legislation being considered by Congress. He said it concerned him even though he didn’t think there was much chance any kind of gun control laws were going to pass this Congress. “Hell,” he said, “both of our Texas senators are completely behind the right to own guns. In fact, Sen. Ted Cruz is completely against unreasonable and burdensome gun restrictions that limit our liberty.”

I asked. “So you think requiring background checks is unreasonable and burdensome?”

“Well,” said Wayne, “Sen. Cruz thinks all of this new regulation won’t do anything to stop violent crime. It’ll just undermine the constitutional rights of all citizens to own whatever guns they want to own. That boy up in Connecticut who killed all those children and teachers was just a criminal using guns inappropriately.”

“Well, how could we have prevented that criminal from getting the guns he used?” I asked.

Wayne responded, “We need to keep the mentally ill from getting access to guns.” I acknowledged that this was a good idea, but I wondered how we could accomplish that.

“As I recall,” I told him, “the mentally ill criminal in Connecticut who killed those kids and their teachers got his semi-automatic weapon and large clips of bullets from his own mother’s stash of weapons, and he even killed her before he left for Sandy Hook Elementary School.”

Wayne replied that every gun purchaser should be checked for mental illness. When I noted that this wouldn’t have prevented the Connecticut shooter from taking his mother’s guns from the home that he shared with her, Wayne suggested that maybe family members of gun purchasers needed to be checked out also. I said, “Ted Cruz is not going to like that idea.”

Wayne agreed. “Maybe we just need to require people to keep their guns locked in a secure gun safe.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” I responded, “but wouldn’t that cost a lot and involve the government even more in my life?” Wayne agreed that maybe this wasn’t such a good plan. “What if we just close the gun show loophole that allows people to purchase guns without a background check?” I suggested.

Wayne agreed, but pointed out that this step would not have prevented the Sandy Hook killings. He had another idea.

“What if we put armed police officers at every school,” Wayne asked. “Wouldn’t that have stopped the Sandy Hook killer?”

“I don’t know,” I responded, “I seem to remember that there was a sheriff’s deputy assigned to the Columbine high school, and he was easily outgunned by the two kids who killed those 12 students and injured 21 more out there in Colorado. And that brings up even more questions. How many officers would we need at every school in America -- over 132,000 schools -- to provide it adequate protection?

"Officers make an average of of over $56,000. Just 10 officers at every school (and that may not be enough) would cost over half a million dollars per school, and more for their benefits. That’s over $6.6 billion per year, plus benefits. Do you think that the taxpayers would go along with even those minimal increases in costs?”

“Well, why don’t we arm all the teachers?” Wayne asked. “One of them should be able to kill or stop a shooter.”

I replied, “Teachers are not trained to use guns and might have difficulty taking on the combined roles of police officer and teacher. Some may not want to carry guns, and others just might not have the right personality or disposition to be good police officers. If firefighters resist cross-training as police officers, which they often do, how much more difficult would it be to cross-train teachers as police officers? It is not currently part of a teacher’s job description to shoot and kill someone.”

Wayne agreed that those points were worth considering. After thinking about it for a minute, he asked, “Why don’t we redesign our schools to be as safe as prisons?” he asked.

I replied, “Wouldn’t that still require a large number of police officers to provide security? How would we pay for all those extra officers, not to mention the costs of making our schools as safe as prisons?”

“That is a lot of money,” Wayne said. “But I’m not a politician. Why can’t they figure out how to keep our schools safe from gun-wielding killers?”

“They keep trying, but every time a bill comes up the NRA defeats it,” I said. “Do you know that the NRA has even prevented government agencies from studying the problem? And they don’t even want to prohibit what are called cop-killer bullets or put tracers in gun powder so that law enforcement agencies can solve crimes after they are committed.”

Wayne agreed that not allowing government agencies to study those ideas didn’t make a lot of sense. He avoided my other points.

Wayne seemed to be growing frustrated with our discussion. “I don’t want kids killed,” he said, “but I don’t want anyone taking away my right to own an AR-15 semi-automatic. I paid over $1,000 for that gun last year. Maybe we need to realize that just because a bad person does something bad doesn’t mean that you get to put some government bureaucrat in charge of my life.

"I’m sorry those children in Sandy Hook were killed, but you know what? Deal with it, and don’t force me to lose my liberty to buy any gun I want without a hassle, which would be a greater tragedy than having 20 children killed by some deranged guy.”

“I guess your liberty to buy any gun you want, anytime you want, is more important than the lives of our children,” I said. Wayne agreed.

Author’s note: If you have difficulty accepting Wayne's views about this, check out and/or participate in an initiative of the survivors of Sandy Hook who are interested in finding common sense solutions to senseless violence.

[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins. Read more articles by Lamar W. Hankins on The Rag Blog.]

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Lamar W. Hankins : Questions Ted Cruz Won't Answer

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, the inquisitor. Photo by Jim Watson / AFP / Getty Images.

Questions that Rafael Edward
'Ted' Cruz won’t answer

Cruz’s performance has been described by various commentators and reporters as disgraceful, appalling, embarrassing, slanderous, impertinent, uncivil, moralistic, swaggering, belligerent, nasty, disrespectful, and demagoguing.

By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / February 25, 2013

As a smart guy who went to Princeton and Harvard, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas must have missed the courses that taught how to do research. Some of the questions he asked former Sen. Chuck Hagel in recent hearings before the Senate Committee on Armed Services, which considered Hagel’s nomination to head up the Pentagon, demonstrated the most embarrassing ignorance, if not mendacity, that has been heard recently in the Senate. For now, I’ll attribute Cruz’s questions and comments to the former.

To demonstrate how questions can be used to cast aspersions on someone’s character, consider the following questions for Sen. Cruz.

Question: Mr. Cruz, do you now or have you ever associated with anyone involved, directly or indirectly, with the Cuban American National Foundation?

Question: Are you aware that the Cuban American National Foundation has been implicated as a terrorist organization because of its alleged support for planning and funding terrorist attacks within Cuba, including a September 1997 bombing that killed an Italian tourist in Havana?

Question: Have you ever been associated with or supported the Cuban-born anti-Castro terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, who claimed in 1998 that he received financial support from the Cuban American National Foundation for a bombing campaign carried out in 1997 in Cuba, and who has also been linked with the 1976 bombing of Cubana Airlines flight 455, which killed 73 passengers (all of whom were civilians)?

Question: Are you aware that several ranking members of the Cuban American National Foundation have been the subject of major drug trafficking prosecutions, including that of Gaspar Jiménez and Rolando Mendoza?

Question: Do you now support the extradition to Venezuela of the Cuban-born exile Luis Posada Carriles based on the terrorist activities he is alleged to have committed there?

These questions have more justification than those Sen. Cruz (R-TX) asked of Chuck Hagel during his confirmation hearings.. The aspersions Cruz cast against Hagel at the hearings were as close to McCarthyism as anything we have heard in recent years, as Cruz suggested that Chuck Hagel had received money from terrorist groups that have opposed Israel. Cruz wanted to know if Hagel had received speaking fees to address a group called “Friends of Hamas.” What led to these allegations is a comedy of right-wing error and dishonesty that would be tragic if the players had credibility with anyone except Cruz’s Tea Party friends.

New York Daily News reporter Dan Friedman explained on February 19 that he was the inadvertent source for the crazy (and false) right-wing notion that Hagel had received money from terrorist groups:

When rumors swirled that Hagel received speaking fees from controversial organizations, I attempted to check them out. On Feb. 6, I called a Republican aide on Capitol Hill with a question: Did Hagel’s Senate critics know of controversial groups that he had addressed? Hagel was in hot water for alleged hostility to Israel. So, I asked my source, had Hagel given a speech to, say, the "Junior League of Hezbollah, in France"? And: What about "Friends of Hamas"?

The names were so over-the-top, so linked to terrorism in the Middle East, that it was clear I was talking hypothetically and hyperbolically. No one could take seriously the idea that organizations with those names existed -- let alone that a former senator would speak to them. Or so I thought.

On February 9, a story at the website Breitbart.com suggested that the White House was ducking providing information about sources of Hagel’s foreign income because one of the sources of money was “Friends of Hamas.” It claimed that the White House refused to deny that information. The author, Ben Shapiro, tweeted about the matter to 40,000 people.

The story was then picked up by RedState.com and the National Review’s The Corner. Fox News host Mike Huckabee commented on the matter while visiting Israel. Lou Dobbs, the gloating host of a business show on Fox, Andrew McCarthy of the National Review, and right-wing talk show host Hugh Hewitt all spread the false and malevolent information.

The allegation, in the form of a question, based on a fictitious name of a nonexistent group went viral. And none other than Sen. Ted Cruz used the completely false story to support his vote in committee against Hagel. The smear of Hagel was complete, for it supported the claim that he was anti-Israel. Republicans used it to justify a filibuster against a vote in the Senate on Hagel’s nomination, though it has been predicted that the nomination will be approved during the last week in February.

Cruz’s smear of Hagel also included an attack on Hagel’s patriotism. Cruz claimed that Hagel is anti-military. But even John McCain could not abide this attack. He upbraided Cruz by vouching for Hagel’s patriotism. After all, Hagel is a war hero who served his country with courage as an infantry squad leader, was wounded twice in Vietnam (for which he received two Purple Hearts), and has fought for the needs of veterans and military families ever since.

Cruz’s performance has been described by various commentators and reporters as disgraceful, appalling, embarrassing, slanderous, impertinent, uncivil, moralistic, swaggering, belligerent, nasty, disrespectful, and demagoguing. In an attempt to praise Cruz, Republican Sen. David Vitter from Louisiana, said that Cruz has a “really sharp sort of disciplined legal mind.” I guess honesty and integrity are not part of a “sort of disciplined” thought process.

Cruz appears to be just the sort of politician Texans still oriented toward the John Birch Society love to vote for, which is why they get elected again and again. But such politicians poison the political system with their mendacity, contributing to the cynicism of many voters. Only 48.9 % of eligible Texans participated in the 2012 election in which Cruz won his Senate seat. Cruz attracted the votes of less than 28% of the eligible voters, which is enough to win in this political culture.

When over 51% of eligible voters are so repelled by both major political parties that they won’t bother to vote, there is something terribly wrong in the land. I’ve often attributed this malaise to inadequate emphasis on the duties of citizenship, but it is difficult to convince disillusioned voters that the candidates of the major parties can make a difference in their lives or in the governance and direction of the country.

Until the major parties, or third parties still developing, talk and act convincingly about the need to change our civic culture, voters who sit on the sidelines will continue to allow the Ted Cruzes of the state to win by default.

A few politicians moved in that direction this past election by promoting the narrative that we are a country built on a social contract that means the government serves the needs of all the people so that commerce can flourish and no one is left behind because of inequality, misadventure, misfortune, or intentional exploitation by the powerful. They understand that those who succeed do so because of the help provided by a government that builds and maintains the infrastructure for us all, and because of the opportunities that some of us have, but not all of us enjoy, due in large part to the accident of birth.

But most Texans will require more to believe that our political, social, and economic systems now rigged in favor of the powerful can change. They have no reason to believe that our laws mean much when the powerful are not prosecuted for their misdeeds and crimes. Contrary to the common shibboleth, we are not a nation based on laws and the enforcement of those laws when the powerful are seldom held to answer for their transgressions, as in the Wall Street debacle of the past decade.

So long as corporations can dominate the country and pollute our earth, water, and skies with impunity, leaving the mess for the rest of us to clean up, or live and die with, there is little reason for non-voters to give up their disillusionment. These corporations make huge profits and slough off their polluting by-products for the rest of us to pay, so their executives and stock-holders can benefit.

All who open their eyes and minds can see that the deck is stacked against those who are not wealthy and powerful. Equality of opportunity and justice are just figments of the imagination, achieved only rarely in reality. People like Ted Cruz will always take advantage of such a system, destroying lives and reputations if necessary to achieve their goals.

And Cruz will never answer the questions posed above because he believes that terrorism against Castro’s Cuba is always justified, as is terrorism committed by the U.S. and Israel. But it is his view that no other country or group should be allowed to take such actions to achieve their interests.

Ted Cruz is a man for all Tea Party seasons, who believes that extremism based on lies is no vice.

[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins. Read more articles by Lamar W. Hankins on The Rag Blog.]

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Lamar W. Hankins : Ted Cruz Vs. Personal Liberty

Tea Party darling Ted Cruz. Photo by Gage Skidmore / Flickr.
Ted Cruz:
Opponent of personal liberty

Like many right-wingers, Cruz has a limited understanding of our First Amendment rights.

By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / October 9, 2012

Ted Cruz, the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate from Texas, presents himself as a champion of personal liberty, but he is far from that. Based on what he writes on his own campaign website, Cruz is a proponent of restricting liberty in vast areas of our lives.

Cruz opposes the right of women to make their own medical decisions in consultation with their physicians. Like many other right-wingers, Cruz does not believe a woman should have control over her reproductive processes. He believes that the government knows best what a woman should do about unwanted pregnancies. To Cruz, a woman’s reproductive system is mainly the purview of the state. Apparently, this extends even to the decision to use birth control.

Cruz’s views on religious liberty revolve entirely around the right of the government to promote religious practices associated with Abrahamic monotheism, though his views on Islam, one of the Abrahamic religions (along with Christianity and Judaism) are not clear. But he does support the government’s promotion of the Abrahamic God to the exclusion of the religious beliefs of more than 65 million Americans, and about 5.5 million Texans.

 It is politically convenient to side with the majority on religious issues, even if that means that the majority’s religious beliefs are, with the help of the government, crammed down the throats of those who believe differently.

Cruz does not seem to see the nexus between the need for access to health care and liberty, but without health care the liberty one has is severely circumscribed. Not only does Cruz oppose access to health care for all, he opposes George W. Bush’s prescription drug benefit for seniors.

I admit that I have a vested interest in the drug benefit, since I receive Medicare benefits, including those for prescription drugs. Cruz would take from me the financial security that Medicare and all of its benefits provide. Without Medicare, my life would be more limited and its length undoubtedly shortened. The evidence shows that many, if not most, seniors are in the same situation I am in.

When Ted Cruz discusses voting, he apparently does not connect it to liberty. Instead, Cruz believes that voter fraud is a serious problem, though he is unable to find evidence for any significant voter fraud -- just like everyone else who has studied the data. That hasn’t stopped him from supporting laws and regulations that make it difficult for seniors and low-income citizens to vote.

No one who claims to believe in democracy can justify regulations that suppress voting, but Cruz is in favor of taking away from thousands of Texans this seminal freedom, without which we will have little, if any, liberty. The voter suppression Cruz favors most seems to be voter ID laws that require a state-issued ID to register and vote. In Texas, 34 counties do not have a state office that issues photo IDs. Four of these counties have Hispanic populations over 75%. Cruz has not protected the liberty interests of these citizens.

In a 2007 report on voter fraud, the Brennan Center concluded: “The type of individual voter fraud supposedly targeted by recent legislative efforts -- especially efforts to require certain forms of voter ID -- simply does not exist.”

For five years during the George W. Bush presidency, the Justice Department conducted a “war on voter fraud,” which resulted in 86 convictions out of more than 196,000,000 votes cast. This result was not unexpected. It is absurd to believe that there is a systematic effort by large numbers of people to cast a vote as another person.

Such projects would be an enormous waste of time, yield few results, be easy to detect, and are adequately controlled by existing criminal laws with harsh penalties. But Ted Cruz cares so little about the liberty of all Texas citizens that he wants to keep them from voting with such voter suppression laws and regulations.

Cruz’s campaign website claims that he has played an important “role in the fight against infringement of private property rights,” including those arising from the use of eminent domain by government or allowed by government.

But where has Cruz been in the fight against the abuse of eminent domain allowed by Texas law for such companies as TransCanada, which is trying to take the land of Texas citizens to build a pipeline to transport tar sands oil to be refined at two Texas refineries and sold overseas to increase their profits? This pipeline will not lower any Texan’s gasoline bill or provide any long-term jobs that will benefit Texans, but Cruz has not stood up for the liberty interests of Texas landowners to protect and preserve their land.

For Cruz and many right-wingers, same-sex marriage is not seen as a matter of personal liberty. Cruz thinks he and the government have the right to tell citizens whom they can love and marry. In fact, he is proud to deny citizens the right to choose the mate of their choice unless that mate is someone of the opposite sex.

No liberty interest is more personal than the right to choose with whom to live, love, and marry, yet Cruz places his personal religious beliefs and preferences over the liberty interests of the entire gay population. To deny anyone such a basic liberty grounded in religious belief means that other liberties can be denied also for religious reasons. Cruz’s position is antithetical to the Constitution and basic morality -- and personal liberty.

Like many right-wingers, Cruz has a limited understanding of our First Amendment rights. To his credit, Cruz opposes “groups that spout hatred and bigotry,” but to Cruz this means that such groups cannot participate in civic projects of benefit to all.

While I have opposed the Ku Klux Klan longer than Cruz has been alive, it violates the constitutional rights of association and free speech to deny that backward group the right to pick up litter along the highways as part of a government-sponsored program, which is an action that Cruz is proud to have pursued.

Cruz may think he supports the liberty interests of all of our citizens, but he is mistaken. He is an extreme right-wing ideologue, selected by the Republican Party of Texas, mainly through the efforts of Tea Party zealots and their rich friends, to go to Washington to destroy the social safety net that protects all our citizens from lives of misery and poverty.

He has spent his brief career in the service of corporations and the wealthiest 1% of Americans -- the plutocracy that is very near to complete control of our political and economic systems.

Texans have risen up in the past to oppose injustice and fight for liberty. Electing politicians like Ted Cruz is a step in the wrong direction. It is the direction that will ensure that we will all have less liberty and more government control over our lives.

[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins. Read more articles by Lamar W. Hankins on The Rag Blog.]

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