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The ruling was 'fundamentally illegitimate,' Cruz says at a campaign stop in Iowa.
Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz has once again denounced the Supreme Court's marriage equality ruling, calling it "lawless" and "fundamentally illegitimate" during a campaign appearance with Christian right leader James Dobson in Iowa.
At the Monday event in Winterset, Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, said the Supreme Court is "absolutely killing us, especially with regard to what they've just recently done to marriage," and asked Cruz his view of the court and who he'd appoint. With a slightly dated nod to pop culture, Cruz responded, "Let me quote the movie Jerry Maguire: You had me at hello," then went on to lambaste the June 26 marriage equality ruling as well as one the court made the day before, upholding federal subsidies for health insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act.
"We saw last summer, in a period of 24 hours, two lawless decisions back to back," said the U.S. senator from Texas. "First the Supreme Court rewrote federal law, ignored the text of Obamacare, in order to rewrite that statute and force that failed policy, that failed law, on millions of Americans. And then 24 hours later, five unelected judges ignored the Constitution and purported to tear down the marriage laws of all 50 states. Those decisions were fundamentally illegitimate, they were lawless, and they will not stand."
Earlier in the conversation, Cruz called on evangelical Christians to vote, claiming they failed to turn out strongly in the past two presidential elections, resulting in a government "advancing a secular agenda."
"We have a federal government that is waging a war on life, a war on marriage, a war on religious liberty," he said. "We have a federal government that is advancing a secular agenda that puts the ability of Bible-believing Christians to live our faith more and more in jeopardy and that is appeasing radical Islamic terrorism, in fact refuses even to acknowledge its name. And if you look at the federal government, you might say, 'Why do we have government attacking life, attacking marriage, attacking faith, attacking religious liberty?' Well, is it any wonder, when a majority of believers are staying home? If we allow nonbelievers to elect our leaders, we shouldn't be surprised when our government doesn't reflect our values."
Iowa voters will state their preferences for the Republican and Democratic presidential nominees in caucuses to be held February 1.
Caffeinated Thoughts, an Iowa-based conservative blog, posted video of the Cruz-Dobson conversation. Watch below; the discussion of the evangelical vote comes at about the six-minute mark, the Supreme Court about 13 minutes in.
