Senator Ted Cruz says he would be in favor of repealing the Texas state law that prohibits same-sex sexual acts.
“Consenting adults should be able to do what they wish in their private sexual activity, and government has no business in their bedrooms,” a spokesperson for Cruz told the Dallas Morning News.
Currently, 14 states in the U.S. still technically ban sodomy, or “homosexual conduct” as it is referred to in the text of the Texas legislation, but those laws were left toothless in 2003 when those prohibitions were deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, leaving them unenforceable.
Still the law, enacted in 1973, remains on the books, and that particular Supreme Court decision is one that Justice Clarence Thomas has publicly stated he believes the court should revisit and perhaps overturn in a similar fashion to the recent reversal on abortion rights.
As for Cruz, his support of a repeal seems to contradict comments he made last week when he said it was “clearly wrong” for the Supreme Court to legalize same-sex marriage in 2015. He has yet to offer a clarification for these competing points of view.