Antonin Scalia Misses the Days When It Was OK for Government Discriminate Against Gay People | Alternet

"In most cases involving homosexuality, Scalia is likely to argue purely from disgust, and to resort to strange justifications for his disgust-based decisions. He is repulsed by homosexuality and alarmed at America’s acceptance of it. Therefore homosexuality is Not Constitutional, or something. Just reread his Lawrence v. Texas dissent, in which he invokes the feared “so-called homosexual agenda” and calls the court’s majority decision “a massive disruption of the current social order.” This dissent avoids most of that sort of talk, but the entire thing is still based on alarm and dismay at changing social mores.



That’s because alarm and dismay are just about all that the social conservatives have left. The last legal argument gay marriage opponents have resorted to is a not particularly compelling claim that same-sex marriage might somehow be bad for children, because traditionally marriage was a tool used to force heterosexual couples to jointly raise their offspring. The “tradition” argument lacks any sort of legal justification: “We have always done it this way” is not really a good defense of an act’s constitutionality. The other problem with the tradition argument, as Ross Douthat could tell you, is that there is very little about modern straight marriage that resembles “traditional marriage.”"