Below,
I’m going to list and discuss some quotes by Antonin Scalia, Supreme Court
Justice, regarding sexual orientation equality. Now, this topic is going
to get heated. I couldn’t care less in this blog about states right vs. federal
rights, federalism, the Madison v. Marbury case, the 14th Amendment,
or any of the other reasons that it is legally wrong for DOMA to exist or for
California’s Prop 8 to exist. What I’m concerned about here is a Supreme
Justice of the Law in America expressing these bigoted opinions in his dissents
and statements. I’m not certain how this is legally or ethically
acceptable in America.
Following
a SCOTUS decision illegalizing sodomy laws (making sodomy laws illegal) in
2003, the State Supreme Judicial Court gave the Massachusetts legislature 6
months to enact a law granting homosexuals the right to marry. Justice
Scalia had this to say: "State laws against bigamy, same-sex marriage,
adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality,
and obscenity [are now] called into question. The court has largely signed on
to the homosexual agenda. The court has taken sides in the culture war."
So
his opinion is that homosexuality is on the same level as incest, prostitution,
or bestiality? Also, in what way does a government have the right to
legislate masturbation or fornication? Or OBSCENITY? Does this
asshole live in the 1950s Midwest America?
People
like him have been phased out. They are no longer relevant. They do
not provide any substance to America except for hate and ignorance.
The
problem that I have with a hate-filled statement like this is that as a SCOTUS
Justice, all laws should always be in question. If the Marbury case is
the law of the land, and judicial review is the way that we operate, then it is
his obligation to the USA to question all laws at all times. But that
isn’t convenient for his pseudo-Abrahamic outdated hate.
"Of
course it is our moral heritage that one should not hate any human being or
class of human beings. But I had thought that one could consider certain
conduct reprehensible—murder, for example, or polygamy, or cruelty to
animals—and could exhibit even 'animus' toward such conduct. Surely that is the
only sort of 'animus' at issue here: moral disapproval of homosexual conduct
[.]" It's true that people generally disapprove of murder, but
there's more going on in laws banning murder than mere disfavor—the rights of
the person being murdered, for example.”
This
gets interesting now. So, homosexual acts are like murder. Also,
and I could be wrong here, but he is comparing society at large being “exposed”
to homosexual activity to a victim of murder. I have several issues with
this.
Firstly,
I absolutely hate when people try to trump up their emotional call-out of one
situation by comparing it to a much more extreme situation. What ends up
happening is that the injustice that really exists, i.e. the victims of
murders, are then marginalized and trivialized. It’s the standard move of
the bigot, to try and compare apples to oranges. They move the goal so
that at no time can anyone predict which hateful angle they are going to try
next.
The
second issue that I take with this statement is that someone’s shitty,
misplaced, hateful, mean-spirited, selfish, and ignorant morals do not get to
drive lawmaking in America. It is one of the things in the Constitution
that still holds up in the modern era. Just because some mythology book
written starting about 3000 years ago, by thousands of different people,
translated into dozens of different languages before English, scribed by
hundreds or thousands of scribes, with books voted on by counsels of leaders
over time, with several books removed and destroyed makes a vague reference or
two to gay sex does not mean that in 2013 you get to create legislation based
on that. Freedom does feel good sometimes.
A
third issue that I have is the link to polygamy here. Now, I might be the
minority, but I believe that polygamy should be legal, as long as all members
in the relationship are consenting adults, there is a means to provide for a
family that large, and there is no indication of abuse. Maybe that’s a
pipe dream; maybe it’s a silly concept. But I do believe in the right to
choose your own path in life, I believe that it is not my place in the world to
decide what is right for people to do that I do not know.
And
of course, there’s another statement regarding animal-fucking. It’s like
the Christian extremist Neo-cons just cannot get away from talking about
fucking animals. I mean, that’s about as wrong as it gets, and people do
it. But here’s the really messed up part: as long as you identify as a
heterosexual, you can fuck all of the animals that you’d like for your entire
life, and when you or your spouse dies, if you were married, you get 1138 more
federal benefits than someone who was a monogamous, loving, intelligent,
homosexual partner. Sick, huh?
"[Colorado's
ban] prohibits special treatment of homosexuals, and nothing more. [I]t would
prevent the State or any municipality from making death benefit payments to the
'life partner' of a homosexual when it does not make such payments to the long
time roommate of a non[-]homosexual employee."
This
one is hard to even comprehend. I’m guessing that what he is saying here
is that he doesn’t even believe that what two homosexuals experience could be
anything more than just a friendship and maybe some late night accidental sex
following a bad breakup and some cheap Merlot. Really. Antonin
Scalia is such a bigot that he doesn’t believe that homosexuals can experience
love in the way that straight couples can. And he says it casually, as
though that’s the generally accepted scientific fact.
I
know that anecdotal evidence isn’t worth a pot to piss in, so I’ll try and stay
away from it…but suffice to say…anyone that’s met some of the amazing people
that I know know the complete falsehood that this statement is.
"[A
job] interviewer may refuse to offer a job because the applicant is a
Republican; because he is an adulterer; because he went to the wrong prep
school or belongs to the wrong country club; because he eats snails; because he
is a womanizer; because she wears real animal fur; or even because he hates the
Chicago Cubs."
Here
we are with the classic “it’s a choice” argument that bigots love so much.
If it was a choice, would so many people choose to have their lives in shambles?
To have their loved ones ridiculed. To be bullied and beaten? I
doubt it. But to someone that’s always had a pretty easy go at life, if
you continue to keep your head in the sand, you wouldn’t know that.
"It
doesn't say you can't have—you can't have any sexual intimacy. It says you
cannot have sexual intimacy with a person of the same sex."
"Men
and women, heterosexuals and homosexuals, are all subject to [Texas']
prohibition of deviate sexual intercourse with someone of the same sex."
These
two statements are doozeys. It takes a brave man to bring up literal
arguments used in the civil rights movements AGAINST racial equality in 2013
and use them against another minority. This is the same argument used to
DEFEND interracial marriage bans, by claiming that they affected whites and
blacks equally.
But,
everyone that watches Scalia knows that he’s a racist and a bigot. He
recently called the Voting Rights Act a racial entitlement. He truly
believes that bringing anyone up to the level of the straight Christian white
wealthy male is granting entitlements.
Now,
this is the one that makes me the most angry because he SAID IT FROM THE BENCH
just last week.
“If
you redefine marriage to include same-sex couples, you must — you must permit
adoption by same-sex couples, and there's — there's considerable disagreement
among — among sociologists as to what the consequences of raising a child in a
— in a single-sex family, whether that is harmful to the child or not. Some
States do not — do not permit adoption by same-sex couples for that reason.”
Now,
just to clear something up: there is NO considerable disagreement among
scientific evidence except for fringe crackpots that do not use actual
scientifically approved processes. The AMA
and the APA both
endorse and support it. These groups call homosexual parents qualified:
American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent
Psychiatry, the American Psychiatric Association, the National Association of
Social Workers, the Child Welfare League of America, and the North American
Council on Adoptable Children. Here's
a great article to read. Links and references to the information really
help understand how wrong this standpoint is.
I
didn’t really get into it, because I didn’t have time. But here in
America, our generation, Generation X or whatever, is maturing. We are
getting into office. We are making policy. We are undoing the
mistakes of our forbearers. We can’t make it all right over night.
And we can probably never truly make it up to the groups that we insist on
persecuting and walking all over. But hopefully, in my lifetime, everyone
will walk around as equals, and we can begin to eliminate hate from our
society. But, then again, this is just my opinion.
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