Here’s How Ted Cruz and Rand Paul Stack Up Against Gay Rights

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As of the date of this publication, two Republicans—Ted Cruz and Rand Paul—have officially announced their 2016 Presidential ambitions. It shouldn’t come as a shock that both men aren’t friendly toward the LGBT community; in fact, both are downright eerily homophobic. We rounded up some of the most disturbing things both candidates have said about the gay community. This is, by far, not an exhaustive list, but a good starting point to fully understand each man’s similar world views toward basic human rights.

Ted Cruz

• Cruz has attempted to re-introduce the State Marriage Defense Act, stating, “I support traditional marriage and we should reject attempts by the Obama administration to force same-sex marriage on all 50 states.”
• Cruz also believes that “engaging in homosexual conduct is a choice.”
• At a stop several days ago in Sioux City, Iowa, Cruz called a potential Supreme Count ruling for gay marriage “rampant judicial activism. It will be lawlessness, it will be fundamentally illegitimate.”
• Cruz criticized Republican Dallas mayor Tom Leppert for marching in the city’s gay pride parade. He said, “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.”
• Salon.com has called Cruz “the most stridently homophobic of the GOP’s 2016 contenders … ” and that he is “out and proud with his anti-gay views, and by repeatedly inserting himself into anti-gay firestorms, he’s showing every sign that bigoted demagoguery will be central to a Cruz 2016 campaign.”

Rand Paul

• Paul voted “no” in 2013 to advance the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, despite his claims that he has “a zero tolerance policy for anybody who displays discriminatory behavior or belief in discriminating against people based on the color of their skin, their religion, their sexual orientation, anything like that.”
• On the Supreme Court’s striking down of DOMA, Paul said, “If you change one variable — man and a woman to man and man, and woman and woman — you cannot then logically tell me you can’t change the other variable — one man, three women. Uh, one woman, four men.”
• Paul appeared on a recent anti-gay documentary titled Light Wins: How To Overcome The Criminalization Of Christianity, despite the fact that his staffers claim he never knew he was part of the film.
• Back in March of this year, Paul said that same-sex marriage “offends myself and a lot of other people.”
• Paul later went on to say that the legalization of gay marriage is because America is in a “moral crisis that allows people to think that there would be some sort of other marriage.”