Cruz defended Texas ban on sex toys

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) defended a statewide ban on sex toy sales in the Lone Star State, a new report says.

Cruz argued in a 2007 court brief that individuals have no legal right to such products in public or private, according to The Associated Press.

{mosads}Cruz’s GOP presidential campaign on Friday said that he was obligated to defend all Texas laws, including ones he disagreed with.

“Senator Cruz personally believes that the Texas law in question was, as [Supreme Court Justice] Clarence Thomas said in another context, an ‘uncommonly silly’ law,” spokeswoman Alice Stewart wrote in an email. “But the office was nonetheless duty-bound to defend the judgement of the Texas legislature.”

The AP on Friday reported that the law was initially approved in the 1970s and banned any device “useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs.”

The same law dictated that anyone owning six or more such items was presumed to be promoting sex toy usage through delivery, lending, manufacturing, sale or other means.

“[The Supreme Court] 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,” Cruz reportedly wrote in an 83-page brief as Texas’s solicitor general.

“[The ban] is protecting public morals — discouraging prurient interests in sexual gratification,” he added, noting Texas had a moral authority in discouraging “autonomous sex.”

Cruz also said that sexual enhancement drugs like Viagra should remain legal for sales as they do not classify as “a device.”

He added that couples — including married ones — interested in using sex toys may also “believe that hiring a willing prostitute or engaging in consensual bigamy would enhance their sexual experiences.”

The AP on Friday said that a three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court of Appeals eventually ruled that the law violated 14th Amendment privacy rights. Then-Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott — now the state’s Republican governor — unsuccessfully appealed that ruling.