Scalia the prophet

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Aug 06, 2010

Back in 2003, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia saw the handwriting on the wall. In his vigorous dissent from the Court’s majority decision in the Lawrence case—which struck down a Texas law against sodomy-- Justice Scalia wrote

If moral disapprobation of homosexual conduct is "no legitimate state interest" for purposes of proscribing that conduct, and if, as the Court coos (casting aside all pretense of neutrality), "[w]hen sexuality finds overt expression in intimate conduct with another person, the conduct can be but one element in a personal bond that is more enduring," what 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. This case "does not involve" the issue of homosexual marriage only if one entertains the belief that principle and logic have nothing to do with the decisions of this Court.

{H/T James Taranto, “Scalia Was Right,” Wall Street Journal}

Justice Scalia’s accurate prophecy is all the more unsettling because Justice Anthony Kennedy—by general consensus, the key “swing vote” when the Proposition 8 case makes it inevitable appearance before the Supreme Court—voted with the majority in Lawrence.

Brace yourself.