(Breitbart) – In the second part of an exclusive interview
with Breitbart News after the public grand opening of his Houston presidential
campaign headquarters, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) told Breitbart News that the modern
Democratic Party is “so radicalized and so extreme” that it won’t stand up for
the most basic tenets of the U.S. Constitution, including religious liberty as
afforded by the First Amendment.
“I’m proud that the state of Indiana stood to defend
religious liberties,” Cruz said in the interview, which took place before the
state of Indiana backed down to the institutional left’s calls for changes to
its Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
The vilification and attacks that have been levied against
Indiana and Gov. Pence in particular have been abominable. It is a sad
statement of just how far we have come. It was not too long ago when there was
widespread bipartisan agreement in support of defending religious liberties.
Unfortunately,
the modern Democratic Party has become so radicalized and so extreme that
religious liberty is now deemed in conflict with the interests of the
Democratic Party. Just two decades ago, Congress nearly virtually unanimously
passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. It was signed into law by a
Democrat, Bill Clinton. Yet today, when Indiana passes nearly identical
legislation, it is the subject of unfair attacks and vilification.
Cruz said the reasoning behind the viciousness and hate from
far leftwing liberals against people in Indiana and Gov. Pence in particular is
because of the Democratic Party’s commitment to the far leftwing liberal agenda,
after previously supporting more moderate positions in recent years.
“The reason, unfortunately, is because the modern Democratic
Party has decided a political commitment to mandating gay marriage trumps any
fidelity of the First Amendment. As a result, the extreme left of the
Democratic Party now wants to use the forces of law against any individuals who
have a good faith belief that marriage is a holy sacrament between one man and
one woman,” Cruz said.
This is today a war on the Catholic Church. This is today a
war on believers of any faith whose religious teachings are not entirely in
concert with the rigid dogma of the far left. Just last year, every single
Senate Democrat voted in favor of legislation that would have gutted the
federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
It
was a sad day in the United States Senate, and indeed I gave a speech on the
floor of the United States Senate standing alongside a picture of John F.
Kennedy who said if a man will not stand for religious liberty, I will not stand
with you. What I called out is: “Are there no civil libertarians left in the
Democratic Party? Are there no defenders of the First Amendment left in the
Democratic Party? Is there no one left who will stand up and defend the
Catholic Church?”
Cruz noted how the Obama administration—through Obamacare
and other mechanisms—has sought to tamp down people’s ability to practice their
religion freely.
“The Obama administration has sought to impose what are in
effect steep fines on believers carrying out their faith when it contradicts
the dictates of Obamacare,” Cruz said.
Now, the U.S. Supreme Court struck that down in the Hobby
lobby case but the administration persisted in litigating against the Little
Sisters of the Poor, a Catholic charity of nuns caring for the most vulnerable
among us.
The
Obama administration was trying to impose millions of dollars of fines on the
Little Sisters in order to try to force the nuns to pay for abortion-inducing
drugs and others. That is a radical and it is an extreme proposition. It was
heartbreaking that in the United States Senate there was not a single Democrat
willing to stand up to the rigid partisan ideology of the far left and every
single Democrat was willing to gut the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and
undermine religious freedom instead.
Cruz said that while the current situation is “dangerous” in
America, the “silver lining” is so many Americans are waking up to what’s going
on in the world and are going to act to help elect a new president who will
reverse the course the nation is on under Obama.
“These are dangerous times, but I will point to one silver
lining which is that as threats to religious liberty grow graver and graver—in
my hometown of Houston just a few months ago, we saw the city attempt to
subpoena the sermons of five pastors again driven by the radical partisan
ideology that’s taken over the Democratic Party,” Cruz said.
They were told to hand over every sermon that they had ever
given on homosexuality and every note they had ever made in preparing those
sermons. It was a grotesque violation of religious liberty. In the end, the
light that was focused on the city of Houston was so great that the city
thankfully buckled under and withdrew the subpoenas.
As
these assaults to religious liberty keep growing, millions of Americans are
waking up and seeing just how far we’ve gotten from the basic constitutional
protections in our bill of rights. I believe that that awakening is helping
fuel millions of courageous conservatives who want to get back to the constitutional
liberties that helped build America into the greatest country in the history of
earth.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/04/02/exclusive-ted-cruz-modern-democratic-party-so-radicalized-so-extreme-that-religious-liberty-now-in-conflict-with-its-mission/
http://www.teaparty.org/ted-cruz-dems-waging-war-catholic-church-92531/
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