Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz on Tuesday voiced support for repealing a 1970s law criminalizing gay sex.
''Consenting adults,'' a Cruz spokesman told The Dallas Morning News, ''should be able to do what they wish in their private sexual activity, and government has no business in their bedrooms.''
According to The Hill, the law dates back to a 1973 section of the Texas penal code, which cites that ''homosexual conduct,'' as ''deviate sexual intercourse,'' constitutes a Class C misdemeanor, a fine-only offense of up to $500.
The law was made unenforceable in 2003 after the Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence v. Texas that seeking criminal punishment for those who commit sodomy is unconstitutional.
But despite Cruz's position on sodomy, the senator said last week on his podcast, ''The Cloakroom,'' that the Supreme Court's 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, was ''clearly wrong.''
''Obergefell,'' Cruz said, ''like Roe v. Wade, ignored two centuries of our nation's history. Marriage was always an issue that was left to the states.''
Still, Texas is one of 14 states with sodomy laws still on the books. In June, Ken Paxton, Texas' Republican attorney general, vowed to defend his state's position on the law.
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