Ted Cruz cleared the lowest bar possible for LGBTQ rights

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, is wrong about many things. Oftentimes, he memorializes those terrible opinions on Twitter, where dunking on him has become a favored pastime among terminally online liberals. This is why it’s worth taking note that Monday saw something unusual from Cruz: a good point.

That Cruz quote-tweeted reporting from The New York Times approvingly is strange enough. So is the fact that he’s siding with President Joe Biden, who condemned Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act the same day. But he’s right to call out the law President Yoweri Museveni signed. NBC News reports that, under the law’s provisions, even identifying as LGBTQ is enough to earn a jail sentence, as are “promoting and abetting homosexuality, as well as conspiracy to engage in homosexuality.”

It also penalizes so-called aggravated homosexuality with death. That charge applies if the accused had gay sex with someone under 18, is HIV-positive or held undue influence over the “victim of the offense.” It also, though, applies if the accused “is a serial offender,” which sounds as though it could be used as the equivalent of a “three strikes” policy for gay Ugandans who are arrested multiple times.

Now, saying gay people shouldn’t be jailed because of whom they love is one of the lowest bars for human decency. Yet that tweet still put Cruz at odds with some of the more outspoken members of the right wing, including lawyer and conspiracy theorist Jenna Ellis. “You or I may not agree with their choices, but consenting adults should not go to jail for what they do in their own bedrooms,” Cruz tweeted in response to Ellis.

I’ll give Cruz some credit for being pretty consistent on that front. In 2003, as Texas’ newly appointed solicitor-general, he passed on arguing the landmark case Lawrence v. Texas before the Supreme Court. The resulting opinion struck down Texas’ anti-sodomy law, opening the door for other pro-LGBTQ rulings, like the overturning of the Defense of Marriage Act in 2013. It would have been a prime opportunity for a young upstart like Cruz to gain the support of social conservatives — but instead he hung to the rear.

And when Justice Clarence Thomas raised the specter last year of repealing Lawrence and other cases based on the right to privacy, Cruz said Texas instead should strip the law the case overturned off the books. “Consenting adults should be able to do what they wish in their private sexual activity, and government has no business in their bedrooms,” a Cruz spokesperson told The Dallas Morning News.

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There is another lens to look at this through, though: Cruz is up for re-election in 2024. Republicans still dominate in statewide elections in Texas, but when Cruz was last on the ballot in 2018, he barely avoided losing his seat, defeating Beto O’Rourke by just 2.6 points. Ahead of next year, Cruz is hoping to shore up his bipartisan credentials, NBC News reported in April, using his position as ranking member on the Senate Commerce Committee to highlight his “ability to fight for 30 million Texans in a way that has real, meaningful impact.”

That’s all well and good — but this is still Ted Cruz we’re talking about. One tweet saying LGBTQ people maybe shouldn’t die for being gay doesn’t suddenly make him a gay rights activist. This is still the person who last year voted against the Respect for Marriage Act, which repealed the Defense of Marriage Act. He also said the Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling was wrong for forcing states to accept same-sex marriages.

It also doesn’t erase how much he has leaned into the current moral panic over trans rights. Just this month he called for an investigation into Anheuser-Busch for its advertising collaboration with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney. When he was campaigning in 2016, he hoped that attacking transgender access to bathrooms would stave off Donald Trump’s winning the presidential nomination. It didn’t — and anti-trans rhetoric become the engine for rolling back gay rights more broadly.

Cruz can expect to walk this tightrope without being called out for doing so little at home. And he needs to recognize that Uganda’s bill is the byproduct of decades of effort by white American evangelical groups — much like those whose support he has courted over the years — to serve as an example to be re-imported back to the U.S. So if Cruz really wants to help the people of Uganda, there are surely plenty of people in his phone’s contact list who will take his calls.