After Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a staunchly conservative Republican who has spoken out about the sinfulness of sexuality, was caught liking a pornographic video on his Twitter account, his communications staff quickly entered damage control mode, but not before his morals could be questioned.
Catherine Frazier, a spokeswoman for Sen. Cruz, said on Twitter Tuesday morning that the the original pornographic tweet "has been removed by staff and reported to Twitter." She did not offer an explanation for why that tweet had been liked by Cruz's account in the first place; if it hadn't been liked, it would not have appeared under Cruz's feed.
When Cruz was solicitor general for Texas, the state was taken to court over a ban on sex toys it passed. Cruz had to come up with a defense of the controversial law — which was eventually struck down — and came up with this rather unique argument:
There is no substantive due process right to stimulate one's genitals for non-medical purposes unrelated to procreation or outside of an interpersonal relationship.
After the law was overturned, Cruz tried to have the case heard in the full circuit court and then the Supreme Court. Neither effort worked.
This isn't the Senator's first pornography-related gaffe, either. In 2016, his presidential campaign hired a softcore porn actress to appear in one of their ads — they claimed they didn't know of her work history when they hired her.
It is possible, of course, that Cruz's Twitter account was the victim of hacking (Gamergate victim Zoe Quinn discussed having her Twitter account hacked in a piece published by Time on Monday). Nevertheless, the reaction from Twitter users to Cruz's current dilemma has been swift and brutal.
Screenwriter Craig Mazin, who has been venting on Twitter since 2012 about the horrors of having Cruz as a freshman roommate when both attended Princeton University, was characteristically blunt about his reaction:
Mazin also pinned this tweet to the top of his account:
While Mazin may have made the most personal jabs, he was far from the only Twitter user lampooning Cruz with gusto.
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