The legal writings of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia had to be defended on Monday because some people find them anti-gay and offensive, according to a report in the Associated Press. Scalia was speaking at Princeton University when he was asked by a gay student why he compares laws that ban sodomy with the laws that ban murder and bestiality.
“I don’t think it’s necessary, but I think it’s effective,” Scalia said in response. Scalia also said that legislatures are allowed to ban what they think is immoral. Scalia has been speaking across the country in an effort to promote his book, “Reading Law.”
Those in attendance who came to hear Scalia speak about his book applauded his comments while other clapped for the question raised by the student, Duncan Hosie.
“It’s a form of argument that I thought you would have known, which is called the `reduction to the absurd,'” Scalia told Hosie. “If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against other things?”
Scalia noted that he was not comparing murder with sodomy but was trying to draw a parallel between the two. He said, “I’m surprised you aren’t persuaded.”
After the event, Hosie said that he was not persuaded by the answer from Scalia but instead he thinks that Scalia’s writings ‘dehumanize’ gays. Scalia make some wisecracks during his speech when talking about the Constitution.
“It isn’t a living document,” Scalia said. “It’s dead, dead, dead, dead. My Constitution is a very flexible one,” he said. “There’s nothing in there about abortion. It’s up to the citizens. … The same with the death penalty.”