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Ted Cruz’s Michigan Legislative Co-Chair Wants To Ban Homosexuality

Michigan Rep. Gary Glenn (left) and Cruz. CREDIT: AP PHOTO/TONY GUTIERREZ
Michigan Rep. Gary Glenn (left) and Cruz. CREDIT: AP PHOTO/TONY GUTIERREZ

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has made no bones about his opposition to marriage equality throughout his presidential campaign, but the newly announced legislative co-chair of his Michigan campaign takes things a step further.

Republican Michigan state Rep. Gary Glenn — one of nine Cruz legislative co-chairs in the Wolverine State — has said he believes being gay should be a crime.

During a 2011 interview, Glenn, who also serves as the president of the American Family Association of Michigan, was asked if he supported criminalizing homosexuality. “The short answer to your question is yes, we believe that states should be free to regulate and prohibit behavior that’s a violation of community standards and a proven threat to public health and safety — including, as most of the United States did throughout its history, homosexual behavior,” he said.

Glenn has a long history of harboring anti-LGBT views. Back in 2012, when Mt. Pleasant, Michigan was considering an ordinance designed to prohibit discrimination in housing, public accommodations, and employment, Glenn wrote an email to every city commissioner urging them to “not to even consider adopting such a discriminatory and volatile proposal which is clearly a solution in search of a non-existent problem, intended only to advance homosexual activists’ drive to have homosexual behavior and cross-dressing defined by law and endorsed by city government as the moral, social, and legal equivalents of immutable characteristics such as race, ethnic background, and sex.”

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Last year, Glenn spoke out against a Planet Fitness policy that resulted in a Midland, Michigan woman having her membership cancelled after she spent several days complaining about a transgender woman she saw using the bathroom at her gym.

“Planet Fitness obviously should rethink its anti-woman, anti-reality policy,” Glenn said. “If they don’t, they shouldn’t be surprised in a conservative family-friendly community such as Midland if they lose more female members.”

In a statement announcing Glenn’s status as a legislative co-chair of his campaign, Cruz said he’s “thrilled to announce the addition of such outstanding conservative legislators to our Michigan leadership team.”

“These courageous conservatives are coalescing behind our campaign because the people of Michigan are tired of career politicians in Washington and want someone who has a record of fighting for our values and the Constitution,” he added.

Polling released today shows Cruz in second place in the Republican field in Michigan, 13 points behind frontrunner Donald Trump.