Rick Perry on Thursday appeared
oblivious to a landmark gay civil rights case he opposed,
TalkingPointsMemo.com
reported.
At a town hall in Cedar Rapids, Iowa,
Texas Governor Perry was asked how he defends his criticism of
limited government in the Supreme Court case Lawrence v. Texas,
which declared the state's anti-sodomy statute unconstitutional. The
landmark case effectively decriminalized gay sex in America.
“We have a federal government that is
out of control from the standpoint of spending,” Perry answered,
“and I wish I could tell you I knew every Supreme Court case. I
don't. I'm not even going to try to go through every Supreme Court
case. I'm not a lawyer but here's what I do know, I know they're
spending too much money in Washington, D.C.” (The video is
embedded in the right panel of this page. Visit
our video library for more videos.)
TalkingPointsMemo.com notes that Perry
defended his state's law when it was challenged in 2002, “I think
our law is appropriate that we have on the books,” and in his 2010
book Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America from Washington:
“Texans have long been involved in significant decisions before the
[Supreme] Court, and often we have been told we can't do something.”