Justice Scalia is opposed to morality.
No, no, that's not right. He just doesn't think he knows any more about it than you do.
No, no, that's not right. He just doesn't think other judges know any more about it than he does, or you do.
No, no, other judges may think they know more than you do about moral issues but we should really leave it up to vote-grubbing, vote-trading, vote-buying, graft-taking politicians, you know, those paragons of morality, to decide how you should lead your life. Not that any American politician would really do that, of course.
What I don't get is how to take the morality out of government.
No, no that's not right, either.
I want more morality in government, don't I? I think so. But I'm not sure. I want my elected officials to work officially in a way that makes my government operate in a morally respectable way, but I don't want government telling me how to behave morally. I have enough trouble wrestling with my own sense of what's right and wrong to be worrying about those folks in Congress or the White House. Or the court.
Am I concerned that a former president, maybe more than one had a zipper problem?
No.
I could care less.
File it under "Consenting Adults, Ho-hum."
Murder. I'm against murder. Always have been, always will. Except if my country does it in the name of national security. Then we can firebomb Germany and Japan. Old people, women, and children. Because they were bad. That's how I was raised. Morality had nothing to do with it. Call it the wartime morality. That'll teach 'em a lesson in morality.
The death penalty. That'll teach 'im not to murder.
Prohibit abortion. That'll teach 'er not to have sex.
Morality. I can never decide where to draw the line.
So I'm going to trust politicians to decide for me.
Right.
My neighbors are going to elect some loudmouth blowhard who gets on a soapbox preaching morality and the way I should live. Then I have to do, or refrain from doing, what he says because he got elected.
This is exactly when I want my Supreme Court to tell the politician and my neighbors to go pound sand in their you-know-what.
But Justice Scalia doesn't want to tell politicians to go pound sand on moral questions because he doesn't think he and his fellow judges are any better moralists than politicians, which they happen to be themselves, come to think of it.
He's right, they don't.
But I still want judges to tell politicians to pound salt on the theory that neither of them has the right to tell me how to conduct my life on issues of personal morality. Whoops, I've just laid down a line. Personal vs. public.
Okay, suppose a white and a non-white person smile at each other, become friends, begin dating, and marry. This used to be immoral. Neighbors and politicians prohibited this by law. Mongrelization of the race, white supremacy, miscegenation. Miscegenation, is a big, invented, ugly word for, as one friend of mine puts it, f*cking.
Judges finally, in 1967, threw out the so-called miscegenation law in a case called Loving v. Virginia, citing a violation of equal protection of law. Good for them. I'm in favor of f*cking. Call it immoral, or call it the way of the world, but I'm in favor of it. I don't want the neighbors, or the local condominium board telling me who cannot be my, like really close friends? That goes even more for the city counsel, the state legislature, and the Congress of the United States.
Scalia wants to get judges out of the morality business, as I read his comments below. He's worried his wife won't let him out of the house. Maybe we could get her to tell the politicians when they're off base when it comes to minding their own business, since he doesn't want to do it.
But you know what? I think he really does want to be in moral control.
He just wants to pick his issues on which to hold forth.
He wants to go out of the abortion-ruling business. Leave that to the pols, thank you, not to the robes.
Okay.
He wants to cherry-pick his morality issues.
Why not?
Isn't that what we all do?
See the St. Louis Post-Dispatch by Peter Shinkle article below: