Ted Cruz' not so secret Right Wing Socialist agenda.

UPDATE- 4/16/16: Good news, Ted Cruz promises not to ban dildos if he becomes president, how silly! The Hill:

WABC radio host Curtis Sliwa asked Cruz if he would ban “the sale of sexual toys, dildos, or anything that sexually stimulates you,” after Mother Jones revealed that Cruz defended a ban on the sale of dildos as Texas’s solicitor general.

“Look, of course not, it’s a ridiculous question, and of course not,” Cruz added.

The headline in Mother Jones was enough to get my attention:

The Time Ted Cruz Defended a Ban on Dildos: His legal team argued there was no right "to stimulate one's genitals."

David Corn chronicles the tortured logic of right wing social engineering. Here's a condensed version:

In one chapter of his campaign book, A Time for Truth, Sen. Ted Cruz proudly chronicles his days as a Texas solicitor general … Yet one case he does not mention is the time he helped defend a law criminalizing the sale of dildos.

In 2004, companies that owned Austin stores selling sex toys and a retail distributor of such products challenged a Texas law outlawing the sale and promotion of supposedly obscene devices. Under the law, a person could go to jail for up to two years. But a federal judge … ruled that selling sex toys was not protected by the Constitution. The plaintiffs appealed.

Cruz's solicitor general office had the task of preserving the law. In 2007, Cruz's legal team, working on behalf of then-Attorney General Greg Abbott (who now is the governor), noted, "The Texas Penal Code prohibits the advertisement and sale of dildos, artificial vaginas, and other obscene devices" … Cruz's legal team asserted "any alleged right associated with obscene devices" is not "deeply rooted in the Nation's history and traditions." 

The brief insisted that Texas, in order to protect "public morals," had "police-power interests" in "discouraging prurient interests in sexual gratification, combating the commercial sale of sex, and protecting minors." There was a "government" interest, it maintained, in "discouraging…autonomous sex." The brief compared the use of sex toys to "hiring a willing prostitute or engaging in consensual bigamy," and it equated advertising these products with the commercial promotion of prostitution.

My favorite line?

Cruz's office declared, "There is no substantive-due-process right to stimulate one's genitals for non-medical purposes unrelated to procreation or outside of an interpersonal relationship."

In a 2-1 decision issued in February 2008, the court of appeals told Cruz's office to take a hike. No, government officials could not claim as part of their job duties the obligation to reduce masturbation or nonprocreative sexual activity. And the two judges in the majority slapped aside the solicitor general's attempt to link dildos to prostitution: "The sale of a device that an individual may choose to use during intimate conduct with a partner in the home is not the 'sale of sex' (prostitution)."

“Whatever one might think or believe about the use of these devices, government interference with their personal and private use violates the Constitution."

But Abbott and Cruz wouldn't give up. Abbott and Cruz quickly filed a brief that argued "engaging in consensual adult incest or bigamy" ought to be legal because it could "enhance their sexual experiences."