Thursday, April 21, 2005

Not if the Founders Didn't Do It

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I'm probably the last person in the world to find out about this, but Sonic Nurse informs us of a recent public exchange at NYU involving Justice Antonin Scalia and a less-than-impressed follower of his career. Scalia had spoken at length about his view of "originalism" โ€” the jurisprudential equivalent of not believing in dinosaurs โ€” and criticized the current Court for "writing a new Constitution." During Q&A, an NYU law student asked Scalia about his dissent in Lawrence v. Texas (2003), which overturned the Court's 1986 Bowers decision (the one upholding Georgia's sodomy laws). Scalia reiterated his view that he didn't know if states had a legitimate interest in criminalizing sodomy or not โ€” because he doesn't regard sexual conduct as a fundamental right worthy of state protection. The law student then asked the Justice if he sodomizes his wife. (Hey, at least he didn't throw a pie at him.) The student's explanation of the event can be found here.

For those who wonder why Scalia deserves such treatment, here's an excerpt from the Lawrence ruling itself:
Today's opinion is the product of a Court, which is the product of a law-profession culture, that has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda, by which I mean the agenda promoted by some homosexual activists directed at eliminating the moral opprobrium that has traditionally attached to homosexual conduct.

. . . It is clear from this that the Court has taken sides in the culture war, departing from its role of assuring, as neutral observer, that the democratic rules of engagement are observed. Many Americans do not want persons who openly engage in homosexual conduct as partners in their business, as scoutmasters for their children, as teachers in their children's schools, or as boarders in their home. They view this as protecting themselves and their families from a lifestyle that they believe to be immoral and destructive. The Court views it as "discrimination" which it is the function of our judgments to deter. So imbued is the Court with the law profession's anti-anti-homosexual culture, that it is seemingly unaware that the attitudes of that culture are not obviously "mainstream"; that in most States what the Court calls "discrimination" against those who engage in homosexual acts is perfectly legal; that proposals to ban such "discrimination" under Title VII have repeatedly been rejected by Congress, see Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 1994, S. 2238, 103d Cong., 2d Sess. (1994); Civil Rights Amendments, H. R. 5452, 94th Cong., 1st Sess. (1975); that in some cases such "discrimination" is mandated by federal statute, see 10 U. S. C. ยง654(b)(1) (mandating discharge from the armed forces of any service member who engages in or intends to engage in homosexual acts); and that in some cases such "discrimination" is a constitutional right, see Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, 530 U. S. 640 (2000).
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