It is with great displeasure that I share with you a piece of information that may or may not decimate your sex drive in the foreseeable future: Ted Cruz is fine with people buying sex toys. In a painfully awkward interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on Wednesday, the Texas senator addressed the porn post his official Twitter account “liked” on Monday, before the conversation turned toward sex toys.
After establishing that the porn like had indeed been an accident, and that the senator’s staff had identified the “fella” behind the incident, Bash asked: “Do you appreciate the irony that you once defended a Texas law banning sales of sex toys?” Cruz vehemently denied the allegation, and explained that he had simply been doing his job as solicitor general to uphold the laws passed by the state legislature:
One of those laws was a law restricting the sale of sex toys, a stupid law. Listen, I am one of the most libertarian members of the Senate. I think it is idiotic, but, it is an opportunity for knuckleheads in the media to claim, oh, isn’t this ironic that Cruz wants to ban these things?” No, I don’t. People ought to be able to do what they want in their own bedrooms.
“I can’t believe I’m going to ask you this,” Bash followed up, “but you’re officially saying Ted Cruz is okay with people buying sex toys?”
“I am saying consenting adults should be able to do whatever they want in their bedrooms,” Cruz answered. “The media and the left seem obsessed with sex. Let people do what they want!”
Given his record on LGBTQ rights, however, Cruz’s freewheeling, sex-toy-positive attitude only seems to extend as far as the bedroom door. The senator has called same-sex marriage “fundamentally illegitimate, lawless, and unconstitutional,” and has been a vocal opponent of transgender rights.
Read a transcript of the whole cringey interaction below, and the next time you reach for a sex toy, remember: Ted Cruz approves.
