As Texas solicitor general when the Lawrence v. Texas case came before the Supreme Court, Cruz was “very much in the middle of all this drama,” said Mitchell Katine, who was local counsel to the two gay men at the center of the case, John Lawrence and Tyron Garner. The two had been dragged out of their bedroom by police and charged with “deviate sex.”

Yet “Cruz remained absolutely silent,” Katine said. The case remained assigned instead to a Harris County district attorney…

Interviews with a dozen former fellow law students, professors, lawyers and government officials show that his lack of involvement in the Lawrence case is part of a broader narrative about the Texas senator’s relationship with the gay community: While he has consistently opposed gay rights, he has often stayed away from the front lines of the fight and even courted gay donors…

Professor Robert George, Cruz’s former jurisprudence instructor at Princeton University, didn’t even realize his student was the Texas solicitor general when he filed a brief supporting the Lone Star State in the Lawrence v. Kansas case. George does not see his former student as an anti-gay-marriage crusader.