Adm Golub / The Chronicle
Antonin Scalia, the 74-year-old Associate Justice of the Supreme Court gave a speech at University of California Hastings on the 24th anniversary of his unanimous approval by the United States Senate on Friday.
Scalia, the notoriously homophobic head of the conservative wing of the Court told the audience that he is convinced that the United States Constitution's 14th Amendment's declaration of "equal protection of the laws" does not apply to women or gays and lesbians.
Scalia, the notoriously homophobic head of the conservative wing of the Court told the audience that he is convinced that the United States Constitution's 14th Amendment's declaration of "equal protection of the laws" does not apply to women or gays and lesbians.
"If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex, you have legislatures," Scalia said during a 90-minute question-and-answer session with a professor at UC Hastings College of the Law. He said the same was true of discrimination against gays and lesbians.
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The court has ruled since the early 1970s that the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection of the laws applies to sex discrimination, requiring a strong justification for any law that treated the genders differently. That interpretation, Scalia declared Friday, was not intended by the authors of the amendment that was ratified in 1868 in the aftermath of the Civil War.
"Nobody thought it was directed against sex discrimination," he said. Although gender bias "shouldn't exist," he said, the idea that it is constitutionally forbidden is "a modern invention."
The court has not applied the same exacting standard to discrimination based on sexual orientation, an issue it could reach in several cases now in lower courts, including the dispute over California's ban on same-sex marriage.
But when the justices overturned laws against gay sex in 2003 as a violation of personal autonomy and due process, Scalia dissented vehemently. He compared the anti-sodomy laws to statutes against incest and bestiality and said many Americans view bans on homosexual conduct as protections for themselves and their families against "a lifestyle that they believe to be immoral and destructive."It's interesting that Scalia will say in public that "gender bias 'shouldn't exist'" but he is on record in a published opinion of the Court declaring the homosexual "lifestyle" to be "immoral and destructive."
Perhaps he should recuse himself from future cases involving sex discrimination or sexual orientation discrimination before the Court?
