Scalia compares the legal 'immorality' of homosexuality to that of murder

I've heard a thousand times that Justice Antonin Scalia is maybe our most brilliant Supreme Court justice, that his thinking is outstanding and deep in ways that are so impressive not everyone understands.

Well, chalk me up in the not-very-impressed camp once again.

Scalia has argued that actually being innocent is not a good reason for a conviction to be overturned. And he's come up with a legal rationale to sell the idea that it should be OK for the cops to break into a home and arrest 2 consenting adults for having the kind of sex he deems immoral - even while being a conservative standard bearer. He explained himself further this week:

"It's a form of argument that I thought you would have known, which is called the `reduction to the absurd,'" Scalia told Hosie of San Francisco during the question-and-answer period. "If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against other things?"

Of course we can have moral feelings against homosexuality and murder and just about whatever else we want to. But we don't have laws against murder because of a moral concern. We have laws against murder because it robs a person of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Your right to swing ends at the tip of my nose, remember - even if I have a moral objection to the swing itself.

Scalia has argued that actually being innocent is not a good reason for a conviction to be overturned. And he's come up with a legal rationale to sell the idea that it should be OK for the cops to break into a home and arrest 2 consenting adults for having the kind of sex he deems immoral - even while being a conservative standard bearer. He explained himself further this week:

"It's a form of argument that I thought you would have known, which is called the `reduction to the absurd,'" Scalia told Hosie of San Francisco during the question-and-answer period. "If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against other things?"

Of course we can have moral feelings against homosexuality and murder and just about whatever else we want to. But we don't have laws against murder because of a moral concern. We have laws against murder because it robs a person of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Your right to swing ends at the tip of my nose, remember - even if I have a moral objection to the swing itself.