Ted Cruz Releases Video Supporting Anti-Gay Couple Who Refused To Let Gays Marry In Their Gallery

Ted Cruz continues his campaign of hate against LGBT people in the name of “religious liberty.”

Ted Cruz has just released a video of him speaking with an Iowa couple who have decided to stop renting their art gallery out for weddings after refusing to let a same-sex couple marry there in 2013. Cruz is using the couple’s story to reinforce his anti-gay bonafides and as an advertisement for his presidential campaign’s “Rally for Religious Liberty” event next month.

Dick and Betty Odgaard, a Mennonite couple, bought an unused Lutheran church and in 2008 turned it into an art gallery called the Görtz Haus. They also used it as an event space and bistro and rented it out for weddings. In 2009, Iowa became one of the first states to find same-sex couples have a right to marry, but it wasn’t until 2013 that a same-sex couple tried to rent the space for their wedding. The Odgaards refused, based on the religious faith, and the couple filed a discrimination complaint which the Odgaards settled by paying a $5000 fine.

In the video below, Cruz speaks gently and softly, but last month the 2016 presidential candidate took a far different tone.

“Today, the modern Democratic party has decided their devotion to mandatory gay marriage in all 50 states is so unforgiving that there is no longer room for defending religious liberty,” Cruz said last month in Iowa, heralding the Odgaards’ story, just six days before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marriage.

LOOK: Ted Cruz: Same-Sex Marriage Will Be ‘Raging Inferno Awakening This Nation To Defend American Values’

“It was inconsistent with their faith to host a gay wedding, so they declined,” Cruz said of the Odgaards. “They found themselves enmeshed in legal proceedings and persecution. Finally, they had to write a check for $5,000 and to promise to never again host another wedding,” he added, twisting the facts – the Odgaards themselves admit they chose to stop hosting weddings.

“So, the Odgaards livelihood has been taken away by this liberal fascism, this extreme view that if you hold a biblical teaching of marriage that is the union of one man and one women that the modern Democratic Party will persecute you and try to drive you out of civilized society,” Cruz continued.

Here’s the video Cruz just released, a shameless political usurpation of the anti-gay couple’s case:

“Your story is powerful, your story is inspirational,” Cruz says to the couple, whose story he is co-opting in the video. “It inspires me and it inspires millions of believers, believers of many faiths across this country who want to live in a land where we are free to live out according to our faith and our convictions and it’s not second guessed by the government stepping in saying ‘we don’t share your faith and we’re going to shut you down.'”

Cruz talks about America being founded by people wanting to “be free to live out our faith,” but ignores the Declaration of Independence that states, “all men are created equal.”

 

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Image: Screenshot via Ted Cruz/YouTube