Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), a potential contender for the 2024 race to the White House, called the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize gay marriage “clearly wrong,” explaining that the Court was “overreaching” when it decided the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges case in 2015.
“Obergefell, like Roe v. Wade, ignored two centuries of our nation’s history,” the Texas senator said in his podcast on Saturday evening. “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.”
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Cruz’s statement falls one month after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The ruling sounded alarm bells across the country not only because of its direct impact, but also because of what Justice Clarence Thomas implied the Supreme Court might target next. In his concurring opinion, Justice Thomas wrote that the Court “should reconsider” three other historic decisions related to same-sex relationships, and “correct the error” laid out in such precedents.
Justice Samuel Alito, by contrast, in his majority opinion wrote: “Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.”
Interestingly, other Republican senators voiced slightly different opinions to Cruz on the matter. However, they were quoted before Roe was overturned.
Back in May, after the Dobbs v. Jackson Supreme Court draft decision was leaked, fellow Republican senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) told Insider: “I think that Obergefell was wrongly decided, but I also think that at this point it is also settled law,” Hawley said. “I’m not aware of any concerted effort to get Obergefell overturned, and I don’t think that this opinion will result in that happening. I’d be shocked if that happened. I just don’t see it.”
Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) also told Insider that he didn’t think the decisions regarding abortion and gay marriage were linked: he was “not so sure that the two relate to each other.”
Perhaps Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) held views most similar to Cruz on Obergefell, when he said earlier this year: when the Supreme Court “creates a right that is not even mentioned in the Constitution, the independence and the legitimacy of the Supreme Court itself is called into question.”
According to a Gallup poll taken last month, 71% of Americans supported same-sex marriage.