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Justice Scalia Defends Comparing Homosexuality To Murder

In a Princeton University speech Monday, Justice Antonin Scalia defended his opposition to LGBT equality and his previous comments equating homosexuality with murder and bestiality.

When asked by openly gay Princeton freshman Duncan Hosie about his anti-LGBT comments, the senior Associate Justice on the high court stood by his logic as “reduction to the absurd.”

The Associated Press reports:

“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?

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Scalia said he is not equating sodomy with murder but drawing a parallel between the bans on both.

Then he deadpanned: “I’m surprised you aren’t persuaded.”

Scalia defended his extreme rhetoric, noting “I don’t think it’s necessary, but I think it’s effective,” and told the audience that legislatures have the right to ban that which they believe immoral. He also dismissed the importance of the Bill of Rights as an “afterthought,” compared to the U.S. Constitution’s overall structure, observing, “Every tinhorned dictator in the world has a bill of rights.”

Scalia will be required to “faithfully and impartially” consider two same-sex marriage cases this term.