Virulently Anti-Gay Ted Cruz To Announce Presidential Run Monday At Christian Right University

Republican Tea Party Senator Ted Cruz will make a major announcement at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University on Monday.

There are currently 20 Republicans getting ready to run for the White House, and Ted Cruz on Monday will be the first nationally recognized right wing politician to formally announce his 2016 candidacy. The son of a Cuban-born fire-and-brimstone evangelical baptist preacher, Cruz has attacked the LGBT community and marriage equality as “a real danger to our liberty,” and is working in the Senate to ban same-sex marriage in the U.S. Constitution.

The theatrical Tea Party Republican will announce his candidacy as he delivers the convocation Monday at Jerry Fallwell’s Liberty University, which is closely affiliated with Liberty Counsel, a right-wing law firm that has spent years fighting same-sex marriage.

“By selecting the school, a private Christian college founded by fundamentalist preacher Jerry Falwell, as the site for his announcement, Cruz is also sending a clear signal to conservative Republican primary voters about his candidacy and his political positioning heading into the race,” the Washington Post reports. “He has assiduously courted evangelicals and other social conservatives as part of an attempt to build a coalition of conservatives frustrated with Republican Party elders in Washington.”

The choice of venue also underscores Cruz’s move to actively court young conservatives. Last month he told a group of mostly 20- and 30-somethings at CPAC to be “entrepreneurs for liberty” and spread his message of conservatism with a smile.

“If we carry young people, we can turn this entire country around,” he said.

Liberty Counsel appears on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of active anti-gay hate groups.

Cruz himself is quite comfortable rubbing elbows with anti-gay hate groups. He has participated in events with the American Family Association, the Family Research Council, and its president, Tony Perkins. Perkins in 2013 awarded Cruz with the label of “de facto leader of the Republican Party.”

Last month, as NCRM has reported, Cruz, a Canadian-born 44-year old freshman Senator, reintroduced legislation which would strip federal recognition of same-sex marriages, and thus, federal benefits.

And in January, Cruz announced his plan to introduce an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would prohibit judges from overturning state same-sex marriage bans, as he believes that same-sex marriage isn’t protected under the Constitution.

Sen. Cruz has been working closely with political kingmaker David Lane, whose American Renewal Project is run under the auspices of the American Family Association.

 

Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license