Offensive Things Antonin Scalia Has Said About Homosexuality

From Think Progress via AlterNet:

Murder, Polygamy and Cruelty to Animals: In Romer v. Evans, the Court held that Colorado could not enact a state constitutional amendment motivated solely by animus towards gay people. Scalia saw no problem with laws enacted with such a motivation — “The Court’s opinion contains grim, disapproving hints that Coloradans have been guilty of ‘animus’ or ‘animosity’ toward homosexuality, as though that has been established as Unamerican. . . . 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.”

Drug Addicts and Smokers: In the same opinion, Scalia suggested that a law which relegates LGBT people to second-class status is no different than any other law “disfavoring certain conduct.” Anti-gay laws, in Scalia’s view, are no different than laws disfavoring “drug addicts, or smokers, or gun owners, or motorcyclists.” His decision to include “gun owners” on this list is somewhat ironic, considering that he would later write the Supreme Court’s opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller which held for the first time that there is an individual right to own a firearm.

More here.

And that's just the first five out of a total of thirteen.

Almost ten years ago, I spent a few days studying Scalia's dissenting opinion in the gay sodomy case, Lawrence and Garner v Texas.  My thinking at the time was that the conservative jurist's thinking was, and still is, considered to be the epitome of right-wing American intellectualism, and it would be a good idea to see what he's all about.  So I read his opinion, and then posted my response.  And I have to admit that I was more than a bit disappointed.  I mean, I expected that I would disagree with him, but I did not expect that what he offered as serious arguments would be so ill informed and shallow.  After all, in conservative circles, he's the man, the smart guy, one of the brains of the movement.  But really, once you get past the legalese, he's not much smarter than a hot shot college sophomore.  I mean, sure, that's smart, but it's not exactly what I would call intellectual.

Oh well.

The point I'm making today is that all these articles about his homophobia being posted in the run up to SCOTUS oral arguments on DOMA and the anti-gay marriage law in California come as absolutely no surprise to me.  His dissent in the gay sodomy case made it completely clear that he just doesn't understand the concept of being gay.  The opinion is riddled with all manner of factual inaccuracies, unfounded assumptions, and outright denials of modern scientific, psychological, and sociological data about homosexuality.  He may very well be a good lawyer; I don't know.  But I do know that interpreting the law must necessarily be grounded in factual reality.  If you cavalierly dismiss real, honest, verified facts, your opinions of how the law must function are suspect from the get-go.

In this sense, Scalia is an idiot.  It's a self-imposed idiocy, to be sure, because he clearly knows how to think, but definitely idiocy.  Either that, or he's a conscious liar.  But I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt on that.

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