More Scalias on the Court?

Surely it wasn't a coincidence. Just two days before the Supreme Court handed down a landmark, sweeping decision favorable to gay rights, George W. Bush asked Congress to make it easier for religious groups in his faith-based programs to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. From a Rovian perspective, the logic of this move goes something like this:

Send the new position paper, titled "Protecting the Civil Rights and Religious Liberty of Faith-Based Organizations," to Congress late on Tuesday. It hits the news cycle on Wednesday?landing on the front page of the Washington Post?telegraphing to the Christian right that you're in their pocket. Then, just as gay and liberal groups begin mounting attacks on the draconian plan, a Supreme Court ruling favorable to gay rights comes down on Thursday, as expected, (and is even more favorable than anyone thought it would be), taking such groups' attention away from your antigay deeds as they focus on their big victory.

The Christian right, meanwhile, might be placated by the faith-based power grab enough so that they don't get too mad at you for staying silent on the Supreme Court ruling. And you stay quiet on the ruling because, well, who wants to be too far to the right of this Supreme Court? Not Bush heading into an election year in which he desires to be seen as a moderate. (Why else did Bush end up praising the court for its affirmative action decision last week, which basically upheld principles that he most likely expected?and desired?to be struck down?)

A devious plot or not, Bush's push on the faith-based plan last week was an outrage and another example?a la weapons of mass destruction?of the president's deceptions and lies, since the administration had previously indicated that it wouldn't allow discrimination against gays in the faith-based plan. In 2001, when Karl Rove was exposed cutting a secret deal with the Salvation Army?telling the group he'd help them discriminate against gays in return for the group's spending a million dollars on Republican lobbyists, including money for a major Bush campaign strategist?the White House backed off.

Now that agenda is back, albeit in the news cycle for a single day, pushed aside by the story of the monumental Supreme Court sodomy decision. No matter that the administration didn't file a brief in the sodomy case or say anything about it as of Thursday. And let's not forget that, as Texas governor, Bush called the now infamous Texas sodomy law "a symbolic gesture of traditional values." The faith-based push is further evidence (like we need any) of the kinds of nominees the administration will be offering in battles over Supreme Court vacancies that come up, particularly now that conservatives are livid over the court's sodomy and affirmative action decisions. Bush has said that Antonin Scalia is his favorite justice, and he's likely to try to appoint clones of Scalia to the court in the future. Reading Scalia's dissent in the sodomy case?which could just as easily have been the majority opinion, had this case come down after Sandra Day O'Connor and Justice John Paul Stevens retired?that's an even more scary scenario than previously imagined.

Verbally offering his dissent from the bench, Scalia fired a big salvo on behalf of the Christian right to make sure Bush nominates hard-line conservatives to the court. It was a clarion call to action and a warning that the Court has "signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda" and must now be saved.

Scalia threw out the kitchen sink in the desperate but highly calibrated rant, at one point claiming that striking the sodomy laws will lead to bigamy, polygamy, adultery and yes, even the dreaded "masturbation."

Of course, if we're going to start locking up masturbators, we'll be rounding up about 98 percent of the population. I would imagine we'd need to immediately haul off to jail Scalia's fellow conservative Justice Clarence Thomas. I mean, surely Thomas wasn't just sitting there idly while watching Long Dong Silver and the other porn videos that the Anita Hill scandal exposed him as having rented, was he?

Scalia's screed sounded like it came right off the Family Research Council's website. He eventually flew into a tirade against something called "anti-anti-homosexual culture," spinning off on a tangent about how law schools have been infiltrated by the anti-anti-homos and their lot. After criticizing Sandra Day O'Connor for bending to public opinion on the issue of gay rights rather than staying pure to the Constitution (as he views it), Scalia, so blinded by zeal that he's unaware of his own contradictions, then hauled in public opinion as a reason to discriminate against people.

"Many Americans do not want persons who openly engage in homosexual conduct as partners in their business, as scoutmasters for their children, as teachers in their children's schools, or as boarders in their home," he railed. "They view this as protecting themselves and their families from a lifestyle that they believe to be immoral and destructive."

Scalia didn't address how that opinion is any different from the historical view of African-Americans and other groups as "immoral and destructive," and why the sentiment came to be viewed as racist and discriminatory. He does, however, try to split hairs at one point about race vs. sexual orientation by implying that anti-miscegenation laws, which the Supreme Court struck down in 1967, were targeting a class of people, while sodomy laws are targeting an activity.

"No purpose to discriminate against men or women as a class can be gleaned from the Texas law," he claimed. That's pretty ridiculous considering that no other class of people would engage in homosexual sex?which is what the Texas law specifically forbid?except for homosexuals! You could go the other way and argue that miscegenation laws weren't targeting a group but rather an activity?interracial sex?as the laws were largely meant to keep blacks and whites from marrying, having children and creating an alleged mulatto race.

But it is Scalia's claim that the majority of justices are immersed in the culture of elite law schools?rather than the supposed real America out there somewhere beyond the stark Supreme Court steps?that is really beyond the pale, as if he is not walled off himself in his Christian right world of dogma and doctrines, speaking at religious conservatives' events and accepting their accolades.

"So imbued is the Court with the law profession's anti-anti-homosexual culture, that it is seemingly unaware that the attitudes of that culture are not obviously 'mainstream'; that in most States what the Court calls 'discrimination' against those who engage in homosexual acts is perfectly legal; that proposals to ban such 'discrimination' under Title VII have repeatedly been rejected by Congress?"

Of course, if Scalia really wanted to get the "mainstream" opinion, all he had to do was look at the recent polling of Americans about sodomy laws, which showed overwhelming desire to have them thrown out. Like all bigots, who often don't have a clue about how cliched and laughable some of their lines sound, Scalia wrote in closing, "Let me be clear that I have nothing against homosexuals." Yeah, and I have nothing against twisted right-wing loonies who believe the state should lock up masturbators. I just want to make sure George W. Bush doesn't appoint any more of them to the Supreme Court.

Michelangelo Signorile hosts a daily radio show on Sirius Satellite Radio, stream 149. He can be reached at [www.signorile.com](http://www.signorile.com).