Politics, Sex

Ted Cruz Is No Fan Of Dildos

Ted Cruz really argued the important issues while Solicitor General of Texas...

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Ted CruzEveryone’s favorite Trump spoiler has seemingly overcome the whole “five secret mistresses” scandal with nary a knick. If anything, trying to converse with Knickerbockers seems to have drawn more blood than the allegations of sex with a bevy of other hard-right missionaries. Either there’s really nothing there or this man truly has a Teflon penis. We’re all hoping it’s the former because no one wants to think about Ted Cruz: Ladies Man.

Speaking of Teflon penises, does everyone remember the time that Ted Cruz wasted precious judicial resources arguing the constitutionality of dildos? Well, it happened! Then-Attorney General and fellow traveler Greg Abbott decided to hang his political hat on keeping Texans from shopping for adult-product retailers like Adam & Eve for the latest and greatest in sex toy technology.

As Ted Cruz’s college roommate said of the story:

Oh dear.

Well, the good folks at Gawker Documents decided to spice up the afternoon by reliving this episode — which surely stands up there with Marbury v. Madison in the annals of legal history — and we decided to fire up the ol’ PACER account to see what the fuss is about.

As Solicitor General, obviously Cruz had to take marching orders from Abbott, but I can’t conceive (not a procreation pun, I promise) of a reason to believe they have daylight on this issue.

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What kinds of arguments did Cruz get to make? To quote Gawker:

(The discussion regarding the “substantive-due-process right to stimulate one’s genitals” begins on page 15.)

O…K… What exactly does that sound like?

Although the Supreme Court has recognized the right of privacy as protecting individuals’ ability to control whether or not they have children, e.g., Carey, 431 U.S. at 688-89; Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 152-53 (1973), it has never suggested that the substantive-due-process doctrine ensures individuals’ ability to stimulate their genitals in ways that are neither connected to procreation nor associated with any particular lifestyle.

Note that this section begins with an acknowledgment that the appellants hadn’t even made this argument. Normally that would raise some red flags, but it’s probably for the best that Ted and Greg went down this road, because it turned out that the Fifth Circuit ultimately rested its decision striking down the sex toys ban on this very argument that the Texas law unconstitutionally burdened the rights of users to purchase their device(s) of choice. The Fifth Circuit denied an en banc rehearing — triggering some fun dissents from pearl-clutching conservative jurists — and with that Texans secured the right to dildos.

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You know what they say, everything’s bigger in Texas, whether it’s the size of the dildo or the size of the dildos pushing retrograde obscenity laws in front of the Fifth Circuit.

(To read the surprisingly lengthy uncovered brief, click to the next page…)

Here Is the Court Filing In Which Ted Cruz Defended a Ban on Dildos [Gawker Documents]

Earlier: Texas and Alabama Still Hot and Bothered Over Sex Toys; Guns OK

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