U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is under fire today for controversial statements regarding LGBT rights.
In a speech to the conservative Federalist Society, the aging judicial firebrand claimed that homosexuality was 'unnatural' and 'unamerican' and suggested states should have the right to ban it under the 10th amendment.
The explosive remarks come just days after the high court agreed to hear two cases that might finally decide the question of whether gays in the United States have the constitutional right to marry. If Scalia's speech is any indication, however, marriage equality won't be getting his vote when the case is decided:
"Certain countries have long histories of homosexuality. France, for example, has been a haven for queers since Charlemagne. And Australia was pretty much a bath house from day one - the English didn't send enough women for the convicts."
"But America's always been a special place. The pilgrims brought Judeo-Christian values and fertile women to our shores. Its not that the founders hated gays - they just didn't want their unnatural ways to impinge upon America's family-centered traditions."
Oh Gay Can We See?
A somewhat stunned audience then listened as Scalia lauded America's long tradition of excluding homosexuals from public life:
"This debate isn't new gentlemen. It goes back to colonial times. When we traded with the Indian tribes we offered them bullets, not ball gags. And they gave us fine furs in return, not rubber and latex."
"Of course there were colonists who thought about doing those things. If I were a young colonial lad I might have fantasied about tying up a nice Indian fellow in the woods and exploring his body for an afternoon. Everybody has those urges at some point in their lives."
"But the founders knew not to be tempted by those wicked ways. They knew homosexuality was unamerican. And that's why they explicitly did not offer it protection in the Constitution."
"Think about it. Anything genuinly American is in the Consitution. Guns? In the Constitution. Freedom? In the Constitution. Private property? In the constitution. Pick up trucks and hamburgers? In the Consitution"
"If the founders truly believed in homosexuality and homosexual marriage, they would have told us. Do you see the part of the Constitution that says gays can marry? I don't."
During the Question and Answer session, Scalia rejected the idea that he should recuse himself from the marriage equality cases because of his bigoted, retrograde views on the subject:
"If the founders wanted me to recuse myself, they would have put that in the Constitution."
Scalia is known as an ultra-conservative voice on the U.S. Supreme Court. He write the dissenting opinion in the landmark 2003 Lawrence v. Texas case which finally legalized homosexual sex acts in states with antiquated anti-sodomy laws.
