During a lecture at Princeton University yesterday, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia addressed the topics of homosexuality and gay marriage. During the question-and-answer portion, a self-identified gay student asked Justice Scalia why he has equated laws banning sodomy with those prohibiting murder. Scalia responded as follows:
“It’s a form of argument that I thought you would have known, which is called the ‘reduction to the absurd.’ If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against other things?”
Scalia added that he does not equate sodomy with murder but draws a parallel between the bans on both inasmuch as both laws entail moral judgments. The nuances don’t matter to liberals, however, because Justice Scalia said the words “homosexuality” and “murder” in the same sentence, so he must mean they are morally equivalent. They took to Twitter to voice their displeasure and the mainstream media joined in as well.
Impeachment. Anyone in mind? MT @nartist: Are there any circumstances under which a SCOTUS justice may be removed or forced out?
— Jeffrey Toobin (@JeffreyToobin) December 11, 2012
https://twitter.com/TheRealRoseanne/status/278556088381628416
SCOTUS: Scalia on the defensive over gay rights http://t.co/ODfYFvmm
— Domenico Montanaro (@DomenicoNPR) December 11, 2012
Equating Homosexuality with Murder? Scalia needs to recuse himself from the DOMA deliberations. As an impartial jus… http://t.co/VLX1dMEo
— David Radovanovic (@nywebdesign) December 11, 2012
IMPEACH THE JERK – Justice Scalia Defends Comparing Homosexuality To Murder http://t.co/KjhLTW41
— Humanista (@eEpicurus) December 11, 2012
https://twitter.com/Dian8Keaton/status/278566950735581184
Scalia Makes Legal Comparison Between Homosexuality, Murder http://t.co/narajwBn
— ABC News (@ABC) December 11, 2012
For the record, it appears that Justice Scalia is actually making a philosophical/logical argument about the basis of society’s morality. Essentially, he is asking: If people use their morals in one case, why can’t they use them in other cases? But soundbites are easier to attack. Let’s continue.
https://twitter.com/scarylawyerguy/status/278564955035418624
Fat Tony Scalia – "moral feelings"! WTF? These words are found nowhere in the contstitution. http://t.co/9q5vr9yL via @HuffPostGay
— Puesto Loco (@LocoPuesto) December 11, 2012
All of the sudden, liberals are pure textualists.
#Scalia equates laws banning sodomy with those barring bestiality and murder.People concent to sodomey, not murder! Get a grip a-hole
— Steven Krauss (@krausssj) December 11, 2012
https://twitter.com/Jimi_We/status/278568048699531264
I understand the technical 'logic' Scalia was employing re: homosexuality/murder, but he's still a smug bigot dinosaur.
— Jordan Zakarin (@jordanzakarin) December 11, 2012
Well, that’s a start.
Reductio ad absurdum = “In logic, a method employed to disprove an argument by illustrating how it leads to an absurd consequence.”
We couldn’t find a single tweet challenging Scalia’s logic. Instead, there were hundreds of personal attacks and a lot of questionable assumptions about how Scalia will vote on the Defense of Marriage Act. The “moral” of the story is: It doesn’t matter what you say; it only matters what liberals think you said.
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