Progressives Twist Ted Cruz’s Obergefell Criticism Beyond Recognition

Welcome back to “Forgotten Fact-Checks,” a weekly column produced by National Review’s News Desk. This week, we dissect dishonest narratives about conservatives and the Supreme Court and hit more media misses. 

Tall Tales about Conservatives and the Supreme Court

Last week Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) voiced the commonly held belief that the Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage across the country was wrongly decided — yet popular Twitter personalities twisted his words to tell a more sinister story.

Cruz, asked what the argument would be for overturning Obergefell v. Hodges, replied that the decision, like Roe v. Wade, “ignored two centuries of our nation’s history.”

“Marriage was always an issue that was left to the states,” he said. “We saw states before Obergefell that were moving — some states were moving to allow gay arriage, other states were moving to allow civil partnerships, there were different standards that the states were adopting and had the Court not ruled in Obergefell the democratic process would have continued to operate,” said Cruz.

Then Cruz uttered the line that is being cherry-picked by his critics: “I think that decision was clearly wrong when it was decided. It was the court overreaching.”

Yet the senator then went on to note that when the Court considers overturning precedent, it examines reliance interests, or the question of whether people have relied on previous precedent and acted accordingly.