Introduction
Justice Scalia yearns the days when gays could be imprisoned for consensual, adult sex. His rage at the changes in the Nation and the Supreme Court on equality for same sex relationships and his impotence to stop those changes is palpable. Fortunately, while he demands that his colleagues be “anodyne” in their pronouncements and cease demonizing their critics he is immune to self-awareness and irony. As a result, we can count on him to display rudeness and condescension in heaping portions in oral argument and his opinions. His dissent in Windsor (which declared the portion of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) dealing with federal recognition of lawful same sex marriages unconstitutional) is a derisive critique of the Court’s opinion. In this column I discuss his efforts to disguise DOMA’s “badge of inferiority” for gays and lawful same sex marriages. I explain the landmines he sought to avoid triggering on this point. Continue reading
