Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Wednesday dismissed the reaction to his official Twitter account “liking” a pornographic tweet, saying the media is “obsessed with sex” and the social media mishap was “an honest mistake.”

“I am saying that consenting adults should be able to do whatever they want in their bedrooms. The media and the left seem obsessed with sex, let people do what they want,” Cruz said in an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash.

“It’s an opportunity for knuckleheads in the media to claim, ‘Oh, isn’t this ironic that Cruz wants to ban these things.’ People ought to be able to do what they want in their own bedrooms,” he said.

{mosads}

Cruz said the “like” was caused by “a staffer who accidentally hit the wrong button and it was a screw-up,” that the incident has been dealt with internally and the staffer will not be fired. Cruz declined to give the name of the staffer responsible.

“It was an honest mistake,” Cruz said, “it wasn’t malicious.” The senator once again stated on the record that “it was not me and it will not happen again,” when asked if he could say definitively that he had not personally liked the obscene tweet. 

Bash then asked Cruz if he believed it was ironic that he was defending the rights of adults to engage in such behavior in the privacy of their bedrooms when he had previously defended a law banning sex toys as a solicitor general in Texas. 

Cruz wrote a 76-page legal brief in 2007 in defense of a state law banning the advertisement or sale of sex toys, which could lead to jail sentences of two years for offenders. 

Cruz had argued that the government should be given “police powers” in “discouraging prurient interests in sexual gratification, combating the commercial sale of sex, and protecting minors.”

“No, no, no,” Cruz said Wednesday. “The attorney general’s job is to defend the laws passed by the Texas legislature. One of those laws was a law restricting the sale of sex toys. A stupid law.”

Cruz said the law was “idiotic” and that he remains “one of the most libertarian members of the Senate.”