Justice Antonin Scalia has opined again on one of his favorite issues -- homosexuality -- less than a week before the Supreme Court is expected to issue two huge decisions on gay marriage.
During a speech in North Carolina on Friday, Scalia frequently listed homosexuality as one of the moral issues the American people and not judges should decide, the Charlotte Observer reports. He also said judges shouldn't make decisions about the death penalty and physician-assisted suicide.
Scalia said that the "judge moralist" who decides such issues is threatening the Constitution.
Scalia was officially forbidden from discussing current cases before the court at the North Carolina Bar Association meeting. But that didn't stop him from suggesting he won't undo two gay marriage laws that are the will of the people.
Those laws at issue in two big Supreme Court cases are the Defense of Marriage Act -- which says the federal government doesn't recognize same-sex marriage -- and California's gay marriage ban Proposition 8.
Of course, Scalia's votes on these two cases probably won't shock anybody. While many people think he's a raging homophobe, he would probably argue that he just doesn't feel qualified to overrule the will of the people on gay marriage.
“In the United States, and indeed throughout the world, belief in the expert has been replaced by the judge moralist,” he said at his speech Friday, according to the Asheville Citizen-Times. “We have become addicted to abstract moralizing.
“I accept for the sake of argument, for example, that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged. Rather, I am questioning the propriety, the sanity of having a value-laden decision such as this made for the entire society by unelected judges.”
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