During an appearance at Georgetown Law School Supreme Court, Justice Antontin Scalia made it quite clear that he did not approve of the Supreme Court’s recent decisions concerning the legalization of same-sex marriage across America.
Referring to the marriage equality ruling that took place over the summer, Scalia drew a direct comparison between the protection of gay rights and the protection of the rights of child abusers and pedophiles.
He argued that the Supreme Court’s logic used in recent decisions concerning gay rights could as easily be applied to other groups and minorities, such as those who molest children, because those rights are also not rooted in the Constitution.
Scalia stated that although the First Amendment does protect individuals who are marginalized because of their religion or political stance there is no real way that any further decisions can be made by courts attempting to base them on the content of the Constitution. If one exception has been made for a marginalized group then what about the remaining minorities, he suggested as he questioned:
“What about pederasts, what about child abusers?”
Scalia continued and went on to say that important decisions concerning human rights should not be made by judges, exclaiming:
“What minorities deserve protection? What? It’s up to me to identify deserving minorities?”
He implied that the act of legalizing same-sex marriage could be used as a gateway to legalize pedophilia and even suggested that some may try to use the excuse that they cannot help being attracted to children, just like gay individuals cannot help being attracted to people of the same sex, in order to justify their behavior.
Scalia has made similar comments regarding the Supreme Court’s decisions on gay rights before and in 2013 stated that they should not be able to “invent new minorities that get special protections.”
Image by DonkeyHotey via Flickr under this Creative Commons License.
