Texas Senator Ted Cruz, a candidate for
the Republican presidential nomination, on Wednesday described
allowing gay couples to marry as the greatest threat to religious
liberty in the history of America.
“We are seeing today profound threats
to religious liberty in America. I think the greatest threats we've
ever seen,” Cruz
said during an appearance on Eric Metaxas' radio show.
Cruz said that he was “heartbroken”
that so-called religious freedom bills in Indiana and Arkansas were
stripped at the last minute of provisions opponents said would allow
businesses to discriminate against gay men and lesbians.
The laws were examples of how the
Democratic Party has “gotten so extreme and so radical in its
devotion to mandatory gay marriage that they've decided there's no
room for the religious liberty protected under the First Amendment,”
Cruz told the conservative author.
He lamented that too many Republican
leaders and presidential candidates “ran and hid in the hills.”
“We're a nation that was founded by
men and women who were fleeing religious oppression and coming to
seek out a land where every one of us could worship God Almighty with
all of our hearts, minds and souls. And that is under jeopardy
today,” he added.