Further proof Ted Cruz is the ultimate buzz kill: That one time he tried to ban sex toys.
Oh baby.
The GOP presidential second-runner once pored over an impassioned plea to cease sex toys in Texas — and his 76-page screedagainst self-pleasure resurfaced Wednesday thanks to an expose from Mother Jones.
As Texas’ solicitor general in 2007, Cruz filed a brief in the US Court of Appeals upholding a lower court’s decision to criminalize the sale of dildos and other sex toys — or “obscene devices,” as Cruz called them on paper.
The case arose from retailers selling sex toys challenging a state law outlining the promotion of their products. The sex shop vendors argued the law violated the 14th Amendment’s right to privacy — by policing the privacy of the bedroom.
As part of his master debate against sex toys, Cruz and his legal staff argued dildos are not “deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and traditions,” and that selling them violates “public morals.”
Ted Cruz thinks people don't have a right to "stimulate their genitals." I was his college roommate. This would be a new belief of his.
— Craig Mazin (@clmazin) April 13, 2016Elsewhere in the whopping brief, Cruz argued sex toys show “no liberty interest relating to procreation,” and he defended the government’s right to discourage “autonomous sex.”
“There is no substantive-due-process right to stimulate one's genitals for non-medical purposes unrelated to procreation or outside of an interpersonal relationship,” Cruz wrote.
The appellate court wasn't’ feeling Cruz’s bad vibrations — and ruled against him in a 2-1 vote.
But Cruz carried on with his heroic quest to rub out sex toys, teaming with Texas attorney general Greg Abbott to file another brief requesting a hearing. The duo even asked to take the case to the Supreme Court before they finally pulled out for good.
Cruz would later became a Texas senator, while Abbott serves as the Lone Star’s governor.
Cruz’s war on dildos hasn’t come up during his presidential run, but he hasn’t grown any more sex positive, as he regularly speaks out against abortion, Planned Parenthood and birth control access.