Progressives claim that the American people fully support gay marriage, but is there something else at play? Presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz believes the evidence shows that people vote at the ballot box to preserve marriage as a union between a man and a woman. During an interview with Glenn, Sen. Cruz explained why he believes marriage is a question left to the states, not the federal government.

Below is a transcript of this segment:

Glenn: Sure. Let’s start here because you have an interesting view of the Supreme Court. I’m so tempted to ask you if you think John Roberts has ever been blackmailed by somebody in the NSA because I don’t understand his rulings lately, but I won’t go down that road. What I would like to know is as a guy who has argued in front of the Supreme Court, has worked in the Supreme Court, we are off the Constitution, making it up as they go along now, right?

Sen. Cruz: That is absolutely right.

Glenn: The ruling on ObamaCare, I can’t even fathom. They used to say—correct me if I’m wrong, not an attorney—didn’t they used to say you got that wrong, send it back, do it right, and then bring it to us, right?

Sen. Cruz: That is exactly right. When the rulings came out last week, I commented publicly that these are some of the darkest 24 hours in our nation’s history.

Glenn: I agree.

Sen. Cruz: The entire liberal media went apoplectic with that comment. They said darkest, what about 9/11? What about Pearl Harbor?

Glenn: This is the end of the Constitution.

Sen. Cruz: Within 24 hours, on Thursday, six justices ignored federal law, rewrote ObamaCare, literally took out an eraser, erased key portions of the bill in order to force that failed law on millions of Americans, and then on Friday, five justices ignored the Constitution and declared the authority to rewrite marriage, to strike down the marriage laws in all 50 states.

Glenn: So help me out on this because I think there’s a lot of people, especially the millennials, that they’re like cool with look, it’s about love, it’s about love. I’ve tried to explain my daughter, and she gets it now that she’s been watching, but she came to me, and she’s like dad, it’s about love. I said if it was about love, I’d be totally cool, I’d be totally cool. God tells me no, but that’s not my job to judge them. I can’t change their behavior, so I’d be totally cool. It’s about changing and dismantling almost everything in our society. She now sees what is happening along the way. Explain to people that might be thinking who are you, Ted Cruz, to judge me?

Sen. Cruz: Well look, you are right, this is hand-in-hand with a concerted assault on religious liberty and a concerted assault on the Judeo-Christian values this country was built on.

Glenn: I’ve heard them, they tell you it’s absolutely not.

Sen. Cruz: Well, they will say that, but the facts speak otherwise. Let’s begin with one of the premises that they repeat over and over again. They say the American people want this, and they point to poll after poll that show percentages of Americans who want this. They point to millennials, and say millennials want this. You know, it’s very easy to design a poll to get the result you want, and there are a lot of advocates here. We are seeing a propaganda effort from the mainstream media and from Hollywood.

I can give you two facts that are counter to the notion that the American people want this. Number one, 40 states, 4-0, have passed either laws or constitutional amendments protecting traditional marriage. When it goes to the ballot box, the people vote very differently from what the Hollywood advocates claim the American people want. A few years ago, the state of California, not a conservative state, bright blue, liberal California voted on marriage, and a majority of Californians voted for protecting traditional marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

You know who voted overwhelmingly for that? Hispanics and African-Americans, so this notion that gets repeated every day on the mainstream media is baloney. This is they’re attempting—if it were true that the American people wanted this, there would be no need for a court case because they could win at the ballot box. They’re doing this because they haven’t been winning at the ballot box.

Glenn: It’s not about that. Your opposition to this is not about gay marriage. One of your big funders as a senator, if you don’t mind me saying, is Peter Thiel. He’s a libertarian, gay guy.

Sen. Cruz: Yes.

Glenn: You’re friends. You went to college together.

Sen. Cruz: My touchstone has always been the Constitution. Under the Constitution, marriage has been a question for the states.

Glenn: Is marriage a human right itself? Traditional marriage, is that in the Constitution? Is that a protected right?

Sen. Cruz: The human rights that are mentioned in the Declaration of Independence are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but when it comes to how marriage is designed—you know, when I talk with proponents of gay marriage, I say listen, you and I can disagree perhaps as a policy matter whether gay marriage is a good idea. I say to folks who advocate gay marriage, we can disagree on that, and reasonable minds can differ. I strongly support traditional marriage as the union of one man and one woman, but we can have a reasonable debate about that. Under the Constitution, there is an avenue to seek to change the marriage laws in your state, which is to convince your fellow citizens we should change the laws. Now, you’ve got to win the argument.

Glenn: But you know that that would break down across state lines. I move, and then I’m not going to recognize, etc., etc.

Sen. Cruz: But Glenn, it hasn’t. We’ve had right now unelected judges have torn down the marriage laws in some states, so right now today the law is that there are gay marriages in some states. In other states, like the state of Texas, there are not. It has worked perfectly fine. I’ll tell an interesting story. So, a little over a year ago, I was on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, utterly surreal, by the way, to be on The Tonight Show. You’re like what on earth am I doing here?

First question Jay asked, it’s Hollywood, he says okay, you’re a Republican. Gay marriage, why do you hate gay people? My response, I said listen, Jay, I believe in traditional marriage, but I’m a constitutionalist. The Constitution leaves this as questions for the states. If the people of California decide to adopt one definition of marriage, they have the prerogative to debate that and do that, but if the people of other states, like my home state of Texas, decide to protect traditional marriage under the Constitution, that’s their prerogative. You know the interesting thing, Glenn, the studio audience in Burbank, California, burst into applause. Jay did a double take. Wait, you’re a conservative Republican. You’re not supposed to get applause from a California audience.

Glenn: So, here’s the thing, my solution to this has been it’s not a federal thing at all because of the Tenth Amendment. It’s not. You say give it to the states. But why is it even in the states? Why do we even have to have that? Isn’t it a contract between me, my spouse, and who’s marrying me? Why not just end it entirely? Because it seems to me what they’ve done is now made this a civil right, constitutional civil right, which now puts all of our churches and all of our schools and everybody else in line for massive litigation.

Sen. Cruz: Well listen, the problem with that is that the government and the courts have always played a role. Whenever you have marriages, you’re going to have divorces. When you have divorces, you’re going to have to dispose of property. Even more importantly, you have children, you’ve got parental visitation, you’ve got custody. Those are questions that under our legal system are going to have to be decided, and the government can’t totally wash its hands of that. If you look at the origins of marriage, marriage long preceded the United States of America. It wasn’t the Constitution that invented marriage or the Declaration or the Supreme Court. For millennia, marriage has been the union of one man and one woman.

Glenn: Church.

Sen. Cruz: It was ordained by God. It was designed, I believe, to reflect the relationship of Christ and the church, and it was designed for the raising of children. So, there is an inherent role when it comes to kids and if a marriage breaks up what to do with the kids that the state can’t wash its hands of. I will say this, the next major battlefield will be religious liberty, and it’s already Christians are being persecuted. People of faith are being persecuted for following biblical teachings.

Glenn: So then let me go there because I think there is a massive wake-up coming. Let me ask you this as a question. If the Christians and people of faith, the Jews, everybody who practices real religion, are we done if they don’t wake up and stand up now?

Sen. Cruz: If people of faith do not stand up in this next election, I fear the greatest nation in the history of the world will be lost.