Fair warning: This will not be a cute post. This will not be an even-handed post. Why?
- A recent report showed that 20% of hate crimes are directed toward LGBT people.
- Antonin Scalia, one of our Supreme Court Justices, continues to see no problem with comparing gay sex to murder – even as the Court is about to rule on two cases involving same-sex marriage.
Is there a connection? Yes! Is Justice Scalia supremely wrong? Yes! Should he be supremely ashamed of being a complete Neanderthal? Yes!
When he was asked by a Princeton student about the appropriateness of comparing sodomy (God, I hate that word, but that’s another matter.) with murder, bestiality and incest in previous opinions, Scalia gave not one inch. Instead he said he was only using a rhetorical device.
That would be fine if the people who committed those hate crimes had a sliver of an idea what a rhetorical device is. Unfortunately they don’t. All they know is that important people – like Supreme Court Justices – agree that there is something wrong with being gay or lesbian or bisexual or transgendered. But not simply wrong. They believe being gay is evil, on a par with hunting someone down and stabbing them multiple times or choking the life out of them with your bare hands. So they think it’s all right to hunt for LGBT people and bully them, assault them, even kill them.
Personally, I’m done. I don’t care what issues Justice Scalia – or anyone else – has with the non-heterosexual part of the world. I am not asking him into my bed. And if I were, the only response he would be entitled to is a very polite “Yes” or “No.”
It’s time that Scalia and all of the people who think the way he does recognize that same sex attraction is no different than anything else they don’t understand – like civil rights or the twenty-first century. They aren’t part of the equation and they aren’t affected by those who are.
I realize this was a rant – a rant that has been a long time coming. The Scalias of the world need to wake up to the world they live in and find a shred of humanity. Or perhaps come to the realization that the people who drafted the Constitution they want so badly to interpret in 1789 terms would never have stood for the ascendance of someone named Scalia to a post on the Supreme Court. Yes, at one time or another almost all of us have been persona non grata to the American majority.
Alternatively, we could just wait them out. George Will acknowledged on last Sunday’s “This Week” that the anti-LGBT crowd is dying off. Gruesome as it sounds, we can take our rights over their dead bodies if that’s the way they want it.
But wouldn’t it be more civilized, more American, for them to realize they’re absolutely and undeniably wrong?