February 16, 2016 | Sex & Society

Ding-dong the witch is dead

We are glad Antonin Scalia is no longer a Supreme Court judge, though we'd just as soon he resigned as dropped dead. When an individual has used his substantial power to keep discriminatory and oppressive anti-gay laws on the books, we can't say we're sad to see him lose that power. 

Appointed to the US Supreme Court by Ronald Reagan in 1986, Antonin Scalia took every opportunity he had to keep gay Americans from gaining equal rights.

In the 1996 split decision, Romer v. Evans, the Supreme Court held that Colorado could not enact a state constitutional amendment that would bar gay men and lesbians from being covered by anti-discrimination laws. Scalia dissented, comparing homosexuality to horrible crimes:  " . . . I had thought that one could consider certain conduct reprehensible – murder, for example, or polygamy, or cruelty to animals – and could exhibit even ‘animus’ toward such conduct,” he wrote.

In the same case he opined that anti-gay laws were no worse than laws disdisfavoring “drug addicts, or smokers, or gun owners, or motorcyclists.” 

In 2003, Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court struck down Texas's sodomy laws, thus making same-sex sexual activity legal in every US state. Dissenting, Scalia rejected the idea that outlawing gay sex violated the Constitution. Such a ban, “undoubtedly imposes constraints on liberty,” Scalia wrote, but “so do laws prohibiting prostitution” or “recreational use of heroin.” He equated sex between consenting same-same partners with sex crimes: "States continue to prosecute all sorts of crimes by adults in matters pertaining to sex: prostitution, adult incest, adultery, obscenity, and child pornography.”

Finally, in 2015, Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court held in a 5-4 decision that the right to  marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples.  Scalia dissented and wrote that the decision illustrated "the Court's threat to American democracy." 

So, while we don't celebrate the death of Justice Scalia, we are certainly glad he no longer sits on the US Supreme Court.