Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, was ambushed at the Iowa State Fair Friday by actress Ellen Page, who started a heated back-and-forth conversation with the Republican presidential candidate on gay rights and free speech.
As Cruz flipped a pork chop, Page approached the grill and began a dialogue about the treatment of LGBT people in the workplace.
Cruz immediately flipped the script by saying, “We’re seeing Bible-believing Christians being persecuted …”
“For discriminating against LGBT people,” Page interrupted.
“No, for living according to their faith,” Cruz responded. He told Page that he would be happy to answer her questions, but wouldn’t participate in a “back-and-forth debate.”
“No one has the right to force someone else to abandon their faith or their conscious,” Cruz continued. “Imagine, hypothetically, we had a gay florist. And imagine that two evangelical Christians wanted to get married and the gay florist decided, ‘You know what? I disagree with your faith. I don’t want to provide flowers.'”
Page interrupted him again: “I would say they should provide the flowers, just like gay people should be able to get married.”
Cruz equated his analogy with forcing a Jewish rabbi to conduct a Christian wedding ceremony.
“We’re a country that respects pluralism and diversity,” he said. “There’s this liberal intolerance that anyone who dares follow a biblical teaching of marriage … must be persecuted, must be fined and must be driven out of business.”
The conversation then took a turn toward international persecution of LGBT people. Cruz brought up the violent actions of the Islamic State, which Page countered with charges of Christians persecuting homosexuals in Uganda and Jamaica “to a violent extent.”
“Does that trouble you at all? That you draw a moral equivalence between Christians in Jamaica and radical Islamic terrorists and ISIS that are beheading children?” Cruz shot back.
“There is a difference between communities like Jamaica that may have different standards … but they’re not murdering people. If they were murdering people it would be wrong.”
Cruz and Page eventually ended their tiff, with Cruz dismissing any further discussion on the issue and Page walking away in a huff.
An ABC News crew caught up with Cruz after the exchange, asking the senator, “What does it say about America that you can have a pork chop in one hand, and have a conversation with someone about gay persecution in the workplace?”
“It’s interesting what that conversation was about,” Cruz replied. “I think that conversation was about the persecution of religious liberty. She didn’t want to have that conversation.”
When the reporter asked if Cruz knew he was verbally sparring with the star of movies like “Juno” and “Inception,” Cruz admitted that he did not.
Page is in Iowa working on a project with Vice, her publicist told ABC News.
The actress announced she is gay in February 2014, during a speech at a Human Rights Campaign event.
