Why Were AntiGay Crusader Ted Cruz And Gay Hotelier Ian Reisner Hanging Out At Reisner’s Pad?

Ian Reisner is a powerful New York hotelier who made headlines recently when a young gay man died in the bathtub of his penthouse, the victim of an apparent drug overdose after spending the night partying with Reisner, 46.

Senator Ted Cruz, of course, is the Republican presidential contender who launched his campaign at the late Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, where he inveighed against the evils of marriage equality in specific and homosexuality more generally. “Imagine a president,” Cruz declared, who would kill the Affordable Care Act, abolish the Internal Revenue Service while “defending the sanctity of human life and uphold the sacrament of marriage.”

We can imagine, and it’s not pretty.

How Cruz ended up in Reisner’s Central Park duplex that Reisner shares with is business (and former romantic) partner, Mati Weiderpass, would be the stuff of Broadway except that you can’t make it up. Google searches would have told Cruz that the home was the scene of a recent scandal and Reisner that Cruz is not exactly a friend of the gays. Weiderpass may well have the only Facebook page that manages to “like” both Ted Cruz and TheHaus ofMimosa, a drag musical comedy.

Cruz, in the home of wealthy gay campaign donors, quite logically sidestepped his virulent hostility to same- sex marriage, saying it is an issue best left to the states. States that oppose same-sex marriage, we assume.

Reisner, one of the owners of the hotel Out NYC in Hell’s Kitchen, claimed that he was there to support his business partner, and that when it came to foreign policy Cruz was “on point.” How the religious conservative Cruz could be so wrong on social issues but so right on foreign policy was not explained.

“Ted Cruz said, ‘If one of my daughters was gay, I would love them just as much,’” Reisner told The New York Times, which broke the story.

Which goes to say that Cruz is fine with gay men, even gay men with recent young men-and-drug incidents, as long as they are not getting married and as long as they are rich enough to contribute to his campaign or have friends who might. His other gay “friend” is Facebook investor Peter Thiel, the openly gay San Francisco billionaire who has funded Cruz’s previous campaigns.

Sean Verdi of New York, a 23-year-old graduate of Steven’s Institute of Technology, was found comatose last October in Reisner and Weiderpass’s bathtub after spending the night with Reisner and other friends. Reisner was not charged in the case.