U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz said the U.S. Supreme Court was wrong to legalize gay marriage in the landmark 2015 case.
“I think [the Obergefell] decision was clearly wrong when it was decided. It was the court overreaching,” the Texas Republican said during an episode of his podcast, The Verdict with Ted Cruz.
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“Obergefell, like Roe v. Wade, ignored two centuries of our nation’s history. Marriage was always an issue that was left to the states,” Cruz said. “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.
“The way the Constitution set up for you to advance that position is to convince your fellow citizens. If you succeeded in convincing your fellow citizens, then your state would change the laws to reflect those views. In Obergefell, the court said now we know better than you guys do, and now every state must, must sanction and permit gay marriage,” Cruz said.
Cruz went on to say that he doesn’t “think this Court has any appetite for overturning any of these decisions.”
“You’ve got a ton of people who have entered into gay marriages and it would be more than a little chaotic for the court to do something that somehow disrupted those marriages that have been entered into in accordance with the law. I think that would be a factor that would, would counsel restraint, that the court would be concerned about,” he said.
The topic of a constitutional right to gay marriage has been reignited following in the wake of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.
In the ruling, conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas argued that the court “should reconsider” other rulings, including Obergefell.
Groups who support the right of gay marriage have sounded the alarm bells in recent weeks over concern that the high court would reconsider and overturn the 2015 case.