June 2003: Scalia gets it partly right
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| US Supreme Court |
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| Supreme Court justices (Scalia at far right) |
In his dissenting opinion in Lawrence, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia writes that,
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| Scalia |
- making it legal for gay people to have sex with each other will cause “a massive disruption of the current social order”;
- Americans do not have a right to liberty but rather the guarantee is for due process of law,
and any liberty can be deprived so long as its done by due process;
- his fellow justices are part “of a law-profession culture[] that has largely signed on to the
so-called homosexual agenda”; and that,
- the “reasoning [of this case] leaves on pretty shaky grounds state laws limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples. … Today’s opinion dismantles the structure of constitutional law that has permitted a distinction to be made between heterosexual and homosexual unions, insofar as formal recognition in marriage is concerned. … [W]hat justification could there possibly be for denying the benefits of marriage to homosexual couples exercising ‘[t]he liberty protected by the Constitution’? Surely not the encouragement of procreation, since the sterile and the elderly are allowed to marry.”
Timeline key: progress (green),
no progress (red),
pending court cases (purple),
events that are neutral, not directly related, or with both positive and negative effects (black)
updated 17 Aug 2008