If there were any point in putting your hard-earned money down on the long odds Justice Antonin Scalia would rule in favor of gay marriage, you can forget about it now:
With a potentially ground-breaking decision on gay marriage expected next week, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said Friday morning that he and other judges should stop setting moral standards concerning homosexuality and other issues.
Why?
We aren’t qualified, Scalia said.
For those of you unfamiliar with Nino’s schtick, this is him being humble. Imagine Billy Idol putting down his bong, his beer, and his portable looking glass.
. . the outspoken and conservative jurist told the N.C. Bar Association that constitutional law is threatened by a growing belief in the “judge moralist.” In that role, judges are bestowed with special expertise to determine right and wrong in such matters as abortion, doctor-assisted suicide, the death penalty and same-sex marriage.
Scalia said that approach presents two problems: Judges are not moral experts, and many of the moral issues now coming before the courts have no “scientifically demonstrable right answer.”
Not exactly David Copperfield, is he? Won’t even flatter us with a misdirection. It’s because the legal case for gay marriage is such a no-brainer that Scalia’s deigned to mix among the slack gobs and remind us how complicated the matter is. Homosexuals marrying each other is like quantum mechanical Parcheesi. Other judges think they can understand it. How arrogant!
His earlier statements about the legal rights of gay couples are even more outspoken. During an October speech to the American Enterprise Institute, Scalia described the death penalty, abortion and “homosexual sodomy” as “easy” constitutional issues. “Homosexual sodomy? Come on. For 200 years it was criminal in every state.”
You roll the clock back a few years, and then he swears the law is a piece of cake. Whatever the states were doing before the War of 1812, that’s what you call “constitutional.”
