Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) is the Ivy League Tea Partier.

Texas’ junior senator graduated cum laude from Princeton University in 1992 and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1995, where he edited the Harvard Law Review. So when he makes an argument that’s insane or factually untrue, you know he’s doing so on purpose.

Recently Cruz made the argument that gay and lesbian couples should be denied equality because we must defend the freedom of the people who hate gay people.

“If you look at other nations that have gone down the road towards gay marriage, that’s the next step of where it gets enforced,” the senator told Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody in a very, very dark room.

“It gets enforced against Christian pastors who decline to perform gay marriages, who speak out and preach Biblical truths on marriage and that has been defined elsewhere as hate speech — as inconsistent with the enlightened view of government,” he added.

To make this argument, Cruz has to pretend that the First Amendment doesn’t exist. He also has to pretend that the civil rights movement has resulted in racists — who still exist in America, where they freely spout hate and post it on the Internet — being arrested by the truckload for hate speech.

Glenn Beck’s The Blaze picked up Cruz’s comment and was able to find one example of a pastor in Sweden who was held for 30 days for his anti-gay comments. The charges were dropped.

Cruz’s argument that churches would be forced to perform gay marriages might make sense if we didn’t have more than 200 years of American history where rabbis have never been forced to marry Christians and priests have never been required perform weddings for Muslims, the American Civil Liberties Union points out.

To argue against marriage equality, this Princeton- and Harvard-educated man has to pretend the Bill of Rights doesn’t exist. But we’re just talking about freedom and people’s rights — not something important, like being able to get a gun without a background check.