As we have noted before, Rafael Cruz, father of senator and Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz, is essentially a poor man’s David Barton since a significant amount of his stump speech consists of information that he has lifted directly from Barton’s own presentations.

While speaking last week to a gathering in Georgia, Cruz incorporated Barton’s latest false claim that the Supreme Court’s gay marriage ruling will now force churches to hire gays into his own speech as well.

During his speech, which was clearly a campaign event for his son as the father is a frequent campaign surrogate and he finished his remarks by explaining why Ted is the best candidate in the GOP primary before handing out endorsement forms to those in attendance, the elder Cruz declared that “the Devil overplayed his hand” with the gay marriage decision.

“The Devil always overplays his hand,” he said, “and the Devil overplayed his hand with that decision on June 26. You’ve got to realize that that decision was not about homosexual marriage, that decision was a decision against religious liberty. What was the basis for their decision? It was the 14th Amendment. That means they’re calling homosexuality a civil right. Understand me well, if they’re calling homosexuality a civil right, that means that the next obvious step is a homosexual may come to your church and demand to be hired, whether as pastor or a janitor is immaterial, and if you say, ‘I’m sorry I cannot hire you because it violates my religious faith,’ you’re going to be slapped with a civil rights discrimination lawsuit. Or they may come to your Christian ministry or to your Christian school or to your private business. Civil rights discrimination lawsuits are going to be a dime a dozen.”