Actress Ellen Page said that Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (R) and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) seemed homophobic and had failed to adequately address questions about their stances on LGBTQ issues.
Page confronted Cruz at the Iowa State Fair last month and asked him why he wouldn’t stand up against discrimination toward LGBTQ individuals. Cruz responded by telling Page that Americans shouldn’t be forced to do things that were against their religious beliefs. The Republican presidential hopeful also tried to pivot away from domestic LGBTQ issues and asked why the Obama administration wasn’t doing more to stand up for gay people killed in Iran or by ISIS.
Even though Cruz said that he was “happy to answer [her] question, but not to have a back-and-forth debate,” Page — who came out as gay last year – said that the Texas senator’s answers weren’t satisfactory.
“I’ve seen multiple videos and read multiple quotes of Ted Cruz discussing gay issues, as well as Mike Huckabee, and it goes exactly as you’d expect. They don’t answer the question,” she told The Daily Beast in an interview published Saturday. “They say you’re cutting them off when you try to ask the same question again because they’re not answering it, because the reality is that they might be homophobic people. To me, it seems like they’re homophobic people.”
Page said that the GOP was ignoring public support in its own party for same-sex marriage. In May polls, a record high percentage of Americans expressed support for gay marriage, though that support did differ among party lines. While a majority of Democrats and independents supported same-sex marriage in a May Gallup poll, just 37 percent of Republicans in the Gallup poll were inclined to support it.
“We live in a culture where even the majority of young Republicans are in favor of same-sex marriage — and I mean Republican constituents, not the people running for president,” Page said. “I don’t know what to say other than it went exactly as expected. It just goes to ISIS and Iran and who knows where.”
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