Republican Ted Cruz, who’s spent his career attacking LGBT+ rights, now says Hollywood is bad for letting China censor gay content
Republican Senator Ted Cruz
Ted Cruz, who has spent most of his career opposing LGBT+ rights, has launched an attack on Hollywood filmmakers for allowing China to censor gay content in its films.
The Texas Republican is known as one of the most virulent opponents of equality in the Senate — whether it’s opposing equal marriage and adoption, smearing transgender people, hanging around with conversion therapists or minimising homophobic bullying.
Cruz has never apologised for attending a 2015 rally where a preacher called for gay people to be put to death, and co-sponsored a bill in 2018 that would explicitly permit discrimination against gay people based on “a sincerely held religious belief” in marriage.
Anti-LGBT Republican Ted Cruz (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Despite his lifelong commitment to being a thorn in the side of equality, Cruz is now trying to recast himself as a defender of queer thought.
In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, the senator launched an attack on Hollywood studios for allowing films like Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhaposdy to have their gay content censored for Chinese releases.
After entire career of anti-LGBT activism, now Ted Cruz is worried about defending gay content.
Cruz said: “It really is tragic that Hollywood has been willing, over and over again, to kowtow to the Chinese communists and let the Chinese government censor American movies.”
Host Maria Bartiromo asked: “How do you tell the story of Bohemian Rhapsody and not say that Freddie was gay?”
Cruz responded: “You don’t, but Hollywood was more than happy to edit the scene out. They did it because the Chinese government didn’t want to acknowledge that Freddie Mercury was homosexual. Look, that’s a huge part of the story!
“The problem is Hollywood is more interested in making millions of dollars from the Chinese market than they are in free speech, than they are in artistic integrity.”
Strangely, Cruz showed absolutely no interest in Bohemian Rhaposdy‘s censorship in March 2019, when news of cuts first surfaced, but jumped on the issue in order to promote his bill aiming to cut off US government support for Hollywood studios who comply with China’s media censorship laws.
His bill only covers China — meaning the many other countries that routinely censor LGBT+ content, like Malaysia and Singapore, would be free to continue doing so.
