Ted Cruz Introduces Bill Limiting Pronouns and Names Despite Going by His Own Chosen Name

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Source: The Advocate

Ted Cruz Introduces Bill Limiting Pronouns and Names Despite Going by His Own Chosen Name

Advocates criticized the breathtaking hypocrisy of Cruz’s Safeguarding Honest Speech Act for its potential harm to the LGBTQ+ community and pointed out the irony in his own name choice.

BY CHRISTOPHER WIGGINS
NOVEMBER 29 2023 10:30 AM EST

Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, legally named Rafael Edward Cruz, has introduced a bill in the U.S. Senate titled the Safeguarding Honest Speech Act. The legislation proposes prohibiting federal funds from enforcing policies requiring federal employees to use preferred pronouns or names other than an individual’s legal name.

The Safeguarding Honest Speech Act states that the bill is "to prohibit the use of funds to implement, administer, or enforce measures requiring certain employees to refer to an individual by the preferred pronouns of such individual or a name other than the legal name of such individual, and for other purposes."

Cruz introduced the legislation along with U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles, a Republican from Tennessee.

"Forcing anyone to use pronouns that don’t accord with a person’s biological sex is an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment. As the Supreme Court held, ‘If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.’ The government has no business compelling anyone to use pronouns that contradict biological reality,” Cruz said in a joint-press release about the bill on November 17.

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Read more: https://www.advocate.com/law/ted-cruz-chosen-names-bill