The Texas senator, 44, is running for the Republican nomination for the 2016 presidential race.
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ABC News asked Cruz afterward whether he knew to whom he had been speaking, and he said he didn’t.
“You’re discriminating against LGBT people“, Page, 28, said.
JoDee Winterhof, the Human Rights Campaign’s senior vice president of policy of political affairs, took Cruz to task for ignoring the issue of anti-LGBT discrimination.
Cruz argued saying that it was the Christians who were at the forefront when it came to ending segregation and he also said that men & women of the faith were allowed to act on their beliefs.
Cruz attempted to shut down the actress, claiming: “I’m happy to answer your question, but not to have a back-and-forth debate”.
“These threats have been growing, they have been growing for decades but never have the threats been greater to religious liberty than they are right here and now today”, he said.
Page, who was reportedly in Iowa for a project for VICE, has not hidden her disdain for Cruz in the past.
Cruz equated his analogy with forcing a Jewish rabbi to conduct a Christian wedding ceremony.
Few realized at the time it was actress Ellen Page, star of the movie, “Juno“. Page is a lesbian. “They used to get thrown in jail”.
Ted Cruz about “the persecution of gays in the workplace and LGBT rights”.
When asked later by the media, Cruz conceded he did not know he was talking to a Hollywood actress.
Page admitted that she is gay on Valentine’s Day a year ago .
“And on the left you hear complete silence about Iran hanging homosexuals”, he said.
“That’s not true”, Page interjected, as he spoke. “Regardless, for me, I feel a personal obligation and a social responsibility”, she told the audience.
Cruz: “Does that trouble you at all that you draw a moral equivalence betweenChristians in Jamaica and radical Islamic terrorists?” Cruz said, using an acronym for the Islamic State.
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Page began the conversation by asking the senator about how “people [are] getting fired just for being gay or trans”.
