6/26/2013

Antonin Scalia Viciously Opposes Your Social Progress:
The Defense of Marriage Act has long been one of the goddamnedest embarrassments of this nation. Passed in an election year, 1996, and signed into law by a president shit-scared that he would look too soft on the queers since he had tried to show them compassion in 1993 by attempting to get rid of the ban on gays in the military, an effort that was an utter failure. It passed Congress with no problems, with bipartisan support, 342-67 in the House, 85-14 in the Senate. Score a battle in the culture war for the dumbfucks.

So today, with time and shifts in demographics and culture, it would have been to the nation's deep shame if the Supreme Court had left DOMA standing. And the SCOTUS didn't, by an expected 5-4 decision, with the expected justices voting on the expected sides. Which means that we get another vicious, latently homophobic dissent from Justice Antonin Scalia.

The fun part is that so much of Scalia's reasoning in upholding DOMA could have been used to uphold the entire Voting Rights Act, a section of which was struck down yesterday by a 5-4 conservative decision. There, Scalia had absolutely no difficulty overturning an even more broadly bipartisan law (98-0 in the Senate).

Check out this shit and see if you just don't feel like saying to Scalia, "Wait, you're supposedly the smart conservative. You just sound like a desperate bitch boy attempting to get the conservative groups that fund your speeches and junkets to shove their cash rolls into your anxious asshole."

First, Scalia is aghast, aghast, motherfuckers, at the notion that the Supreme Court would dare to believe that it has the power to overturn the mighty Congress: The majority says that "judicial review must march on regardless, lest we 'undermine the clear dictate of the separation-of-powers principle that when an Act of Congress is alleged to conflict with the Constitution, it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.'" Then, with the kind of hyperventilating hyperbole that'd make Morton Downey, Jr. say, "Whoa, calm down there, big fella," Scalia vents, "That is jaw-dropping. It is an assertion of judicial supremacy over the people’s Representatives in Congress and the Executive. It envisions a Supreme Court standing (or rather enthroned) at the apex of government, empowered to decide all constitutional questions, always and every-where 'primary' in its role."

Now, the Rude Pundit's no Supreme Court justice who probably should have died a long time ago from the weight of all the evil that he's caused over the decades, but he does know where to find the Constitution online. And, hey, look, it's little ol' Article III, Section 2, which reads, "The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority." In other words, the founders envisioned a Supreme Court which decides all cases related to the Constitution. But, fuck, why bother with shit that you could learn in middle school social studies classes?

Scalia's dissent is so filled with disdain for everything, angry in a King-Kong-gets-shot-by-a-biplane kind of gorilla rage, that you just wanna hate masturbate to it. "Oh, yeah, yeah, fuck you, Tony, suck on this cultural hegemony and tell us how much it makes you wanna vomit." And then, when he starts to get pissed at Justice Alito's dissent, we're into something that veers towards camp. Well, shit, he is usually wearing a gown.

Towards the end, he writes, "In sum, that Court which finds it so horrific that Congress irrationally and hatefully robbed same-sex couples of the 'personhood and dignity' which state legislatures conferred upon them, will of a certitude be similarly appalled by state legislatures’ irrational and hateful failure to acknowledge that 'personhood and dignity' in the first place." You got that? The dude who just told states to go nuts suppressing minority voters now thinks we should be worried that if the the federal government doesn't discriminate against the GLBT community, states will. Oh, dear. Whatever will they do? Pass amendments to their states' constitutions on the definition of marriage, like, you know, a bunch of backwards ass states already did? And then Scalia says that he's sure those laws will be challenged in court, oh-his-stars-and-garters.

The way Scalia concludes his dissent, he may as well be saying, "No, really, I have gay friends. I'm cool." He fumes, "In the majority’s telling, this story is black-and-white: Hate your neighbor or come along with us. The truth is more complicated. It is hard to admit that one’s political opponents are not monsters, especially in a struggle like this one, and the challenge in the end proves more than today’s Court can handle. Too bad. A reminder that disagreement over something so fundamental as marriage can still be politically legitimate would have been a fit task for what in earlier times was called the judicial temperament."

In the conservative majority's view, as revealed this week, racism has been nearly eliminated, so we can get rid of laws protecting minorities, and you can oppose same-sex marriage for perfectly valid reasons that have nothing to do with hating gays and lesbians. The delusions of straight, white, male privilege have rarely been put in such stark relief in the contemporary world.

Go down fighting, Justice Scalia, you hypocritical activist judge who declares you're no activist. Flail away at the waves of progress, and when the tsunami hits, you just have to hope, piece of shit that you are, that you're a floater and not a sinker.