Last edited: October 26, 2003


Justice Mocks Liberal Colleagues, Recent Decision on Sodomy Laws

Focus on the Family, October 24, 2003

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia Thursday said his colleagues on the Court ignore the meaning of the Constitution when it suits their purposes.

Scalia, a conservative member of the high court, ridiculed the Court’s recent ruling legalizing consensual gay sex, telling an audience of conservative activists Thursday that the ruling ignores the Constitution in favor of a modern, liberal sensibility.

“Most of today’s experts on the Constitution think the document written in Philadelphia in 1787 was simply an early attempt at the construction of what is called ‘a liberal political order,’ “ Scalia told a gathering at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.

The ruling in Lawrence v. Texas, Scalia said, “held to be a constitutional right what had been a criminal offense at the time of the founding and for nearly 200 years thereafter.”

Scalia spoke after standing with some 800 others to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. The Supreme Court announced last week that it will hear a case testing the constitutionality of the current version of the pledge as it is recited in public schools. Scalia declined to take part because of remarks he made earlier this year critical of a lower court ruling in the case.

The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had found the Pledge was unconstitutional in public school classrooms because it contains the phrase, “one nation, under God.”

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