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Bye Scalicia: Antonin Scalia's Worst Decisions on the Rights of Women and LGBTQs

Go gentle into that good night​, you angry toad man.
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Anotnin Scalia is dead, but his particular strain of retrograde logic on women rights and gay rights will be forever embroidered into this kooky quilt we call a democracy! In honor of his death, we look back on some of the most bat-shit and offensive decisions Scalia ever.


Destroy "the mansion of constitutionalized abortion"

In Webster v Reproductive Health Services, the court upheld Missouri law that imposed restrictions on the use of state funds, facilities, and employees in performing, assisting with, or counseling on abortions. It also enabled states to legislate abortion in ways thought not before possible under Roe v Wade. The court rejected the argument that these restrictions were unconstitutional. Scalia concurred with the decision but had to throw in his complaints that Roe was being dismantled piecemeal instead of being demolished in one majority opinion drone strike.

"The result of our vote today is that we will not reconsider that prior opinion, even if most of the Justices think it is wrong, unless we have before us a statute that in fact contradicts it -- and even then (under our newly discovered "no broader than necessary" requirement) only minor problematical aspects of Roe will be reconsidered, unless one expects state legislatures to adopt provisions whose compliance with Roe cannot even be argued with a straight face.It thus appears that the mansion of constitutionalized abortion law, constructed overnight in Roe v. Wade, must be disassembled doorjamb by doorjamb, and never entirely brought down, no matter how wrong it may be."

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Abortion is as bad as "suicide" or "adult incest" or "homosexual sodomy"

Planned Parenthood v Casey was the first real threat to Roe. The court considered the constitutionality of Pennsylvania's Abortion Control Act of 1982 which created new barriers to abortion such as: spousal notice, informed consent, parental consent, a medical emergency definition, certain clinic reporting requirements. The court upheld all the new restrictions with the exception of the spousal notification requirement. Scalia thought that the court was being too timid.

"The right to abort, we are told, inheres in "liberty" because it is among "a person's most basic decisions,"…it involves a "most intimate and personal choic[e],"; it is "central to personal dignity and autonomy,"; it "originate[s] within the zone of conscience and belief,"; it is "too intimate and personal" for state interference; it reflects "intimate views" of a "deep, personal character,"; it involves "intimate relationships," and notions of "personal autonomy and bodily integrity,"; and it concerns a particularly "important decision". But it is obvious to anyone applying "reasoned judgment" that the same adjectives can be applied to many forms of conduct that this Court has held are not entitled to constitutional protection--because, like abortion, they are forms of conduct that have long been criminalized in American society. Those adjectives might be applied, for example, to homosexual sodomy, polygamy, adult incest, and suicide, all of which are equally "intimate" and "deep[ly] personal" decisions involving "personal autonomy and bodily integrity," and all of which can constitutionally be proscribed because it is our unquestionable constitutional tradition that they are proscribable. (citations omitted)

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The right to an abortion has nothing to do with the constitution

In Gonzalez v Carhart, the court upheld the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 which prohibited a rarely used medical procedure referred to in medical literature as an intact dilation and extraction. In his concurring opinion Scalia writes:

I write separately to reiterate my view that the Court's abortion jurisprudence, including Casey and Roe v. Wade, has no basis in the Constitution.


Animosity towards homosexuality is totally fine!

In Romer v Evans, the court overturned Colorado's ban (known as Amendment 2) on any local jurisdictions outlawing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. This is considered a landmark decision that paved the way for same-sex marriage. Scalia was having none of it. When Scalia uses the word "conduct" in his opinion, we're pretty sure he means butt sex.

This Court has no business imposing upon all Americans the resolution favored by the elite class from which the Members of this institution are selected, pronouncing that "animosity" toward homosexuality is evil. I vigorously dissent…Coloradans are, as I say, entitled to be hostile toward homosexual conduct, the fact is that the degree of hostility reflected by Amendment 2 is the smallest conceivable


Legal butt sex is a "massive disruption to social order"

In Lawrence v Texas, the court overturned a Texas law that criminalized "homosexual sex". If there's anything Scalia hates more than affirmative action, abortion, or jiggery- pokey applesauce, it's sodomy.

What a massive disruption of the current social order…Texas Penal Code Ann. §21.06(a) (2003) [the anti-sodomy law challenged by this case] undoubtedly imposes constraints on liberty. So do laws prohibiting prostitution, recreational use of heroin, and, for that matter, working more than 60 hours per week in a bakery. This effectively decrees the end of all morals legislation….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. They view this as protecting themselves and their families from a lifestyle that they believe to be immoral and destructive. The Court views it as "discrimination" which it is the function of our judgments to deter.

Goodbye, Scalia, your frail deeds have danced long enough.