Yeah, it's a cultural thing. They were brought up that way, it's ingrained in them, and they don't know any better.
Just saw this worthless thread and the usual make up shit tactics that Spike (and others) seem to use whenever it suits their purpose. Nothing in those mentioned comments - nothing at all - says anything about Ted Cruz flip flopping on anything. Cruz has always said that defending the Constitution has always been his priority. Libertarian beliefs have always been about state's rights, leaving social decisions like that to the state, etc. I wonder how many flip flops and backtracks we could find on other candidate's positions? I dunno, say Hillary? Give the desperation a rest.
There is absolutely no connection between the push for more state's rights (less Federal oversight) and forcing people to sit in a cafe filled with smokers. None at all. I support the smoking ban in restaurants. Not because I don't smoke (I don't) but because second hand smoke is harmful and someone's right to a healthy environment supersedes someone else's right to smoke. I would be equally against making cigarettes illegal. If someone wants to smoke them in their house, go right ahead.
Cruz's position is not "nuanced" in the least. Absurd situations are created by leaving these matters to the States, and apparently everyone can see this except you and Ted Cruz! [Actually you're the only one that can't see it. I'm certain Cruz is smart enough to understand the ridiculousness of leaving these matters to the States. He is taking his position not because it makes logical sense, but for another reason.] The Constitution doesn't contain a right to marry either! Should we leave marriage to the States then? Utah largely ignored polygamy, the old testament of the Christian Bible is rife with it, until the Federal government got involved. Was the government wrong? Federal statutes abound with the terms "married" and "marriage," and the federal government gives important, meaningful benefits to married people that those who co-habitate, but are not married, don't get. If you leave this sort of thing to the States, then do gays who are allowed to marry in some States get those benefits, and the gays who can not marry in other States not get those benefits? Do you re-write all those statutes? There is nothing "nuanced" about this!!!
how did the federal government ever get into the marriage business in the first place? Maybe through the back door IRS, but just because one state decides to give people rights when it comes to marriage doesn't mean we all need to make a decision on it. Depriving people in one state what another state declares as a right is not a federal crime!! Oh wait, didn't we already fight a war on that one?
We got along for 250 years just fine without a Constitutional right to gay marriage. It's always a mystery to me how you can have the defining document of your country, the Constitution, change shape in bizarre forms just because a handful of unelected judges decide they know better than We the People. This is not a question of federalism, ie whether the states or federal legislatures can enact laws concerning marriage. The Defense of Marriage Act, signed by some guy named Clinton, regulated the definition of marriage for federal purposes, so your entire argument falls apart. The point Cruz and I are making however is about the balance of power between the courts and the democratic branches of government. If there is somehow a constitutional right to gay marriage that somehow was hidden in the Constitution for 250 years, what else is hiding in there? A constitutional right to marry your cat? Or why can't I have four wives like the koran says? When rights can be invented out of whole cloth because a small but rich and powerful group of activists wants it, it taints all of constitutional law and reduces the federal courts to the status of some banana republic judiciary.
It may not be a federal "crime", but it could constitute a violation of the equal protection clause of the Constitution. That's why some matters ought not be left up to the States. The result of this foolishness, such as trying to regulate access to abortions State by State, or regulating who can marry State by State, will be a lot of money being transferred from our pockets to lawyers pockets in a hopeless cause.. Any time you try to pass, piecemeal, statutes that have their underpinnings unquestionably in the dogma of religion, you are almost certain to run into a constitutional challenge that you are very likely to lose.
In this case a handful of judges did know better than at least a minority of the people. The right to gay marriage was there ever since at least the passing of the Fifth Amendment, in the form of the Constitution's equal protection clause, and I would argue that it was always there implicitly. It took a court challenge to make this clear. I think Lawyers understood, even though large segments of the population didn't, that you could not get away with denying federal benefits to gay couples that you provided to heterosexual couples. At least the Court got this one right. Now if only we could get the Court to recognize that a Corporation is not a person, and money is not speech..
The rights of cats are not protected by the Constitution. Therefore I would waste little time, if I were you, worrying about your cat's right to marry you, or for that matter, your cat's right to social security survivor benefits based on your income.