• Gay student asks Justice Scalia to defend his 'bestiality' comments

    Alex Wong / Getty Images file

    Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, seen in October 2012.

    By Elizabeth Chuck, Staff Writer, NBC News

    Updated at 4:40 p.m. ET -- Just days after the Supreme Court announced it would take its first serious look at gay marriage, Justice Antonin Scalia was asked to defend his legal writings on homosexuality.

    The Supreme Court justice was visiting Princeton University on Monday to discuss his latest book when a college freshman, who identifies as gay, asked Scalia about the comparison he has drawn between laws banning sodomy with those barring bestiality and murder.

    “If we cannot have moral feelings against or objections to homosexuality, can we have it against anything?” Scalia said in response to the question, according to The Daily Princetonian. “I don’t think it’s necessary, but I think it’s effective.”

    Scalia told Princeton student Duncan Hosie that he is not equating sodomy with bestiality or murder, but drawing parallels between the bans.

    Scalia added dryly, “I’m surprised you weren’t persuaded,”  the student newspaper reported.

    Hosie's question -- which received a round of applause -- stemmed from a 2003 case, Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down a Texas anti-sodomy law. Scalia had dissented in the case; in his dissent, he makes a couple of comparisons to laws against bestiality and declares, "nowhere does the Court’s opinion declare that homosexual sodomy is a 'fundamental right.'"

    Scalia, the longest-serving justice on the current court was at Princeton to promote his new book, “Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts,” and to talk about the interpretation of, the Constitution. It was during a question-and-answer session that Hosie asked him about Lawrence v. Texas. 

    "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, The Associated Press reported.

    Reduction to the absurd, an English translation of the Latin term "reductio ad absurdum," is a form of logic in which one refutes an argument by showing that its inevitable consequences would be absurd.

    Hosie later told NBC News he didn't feel persuaded by Scalia's response.

    "I was very pleased that Scalia was polite with me. I thought he was respectful with me, so I appreciate that, however, I disagree with the substance of his answer," Hosie said.

    "If you’re making an argument to convince people, you don’t want to alienate people, and that’s what Scalia did with his language. He didn’t just alienate liberals by comparing laws against gay sex to laws against murder and bestiality, he has alienated laws conservatives have condemned. It didn’t make sense to me," he added.


    The Supreme Court will be reviewing California's ban on same-sex marriage and a federal law that defines marriage as only the legal union of a man and a woman in March, with a decision expected by late June.

    Scalia has "not been opaque" about his feelings toward same-sex marriage in the past, and gay rights advocates do not expect him to change his mind when the Supreme Court hears the cases in the spring, said Fred Sainz, vice president of communications at Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay rights organization.

    "It's safe to say he is a vote in the 'no' column," Sainz said. "He is not a justice that has an open mind towards these issues that are coming his way.” 

    Hosie said he hopes the exchange he had with Scalia, while it may not change the justice's mind, will at least change the fiery words he uses in the future.

    "I feel as if he’s crossed a line in comparing some of the things he’s compared gay rights to ... so hopefully this media coverage will encourage Justice Scalia to be more conscientious and careful in the words he uses," he said.

    Scalia didn't discuss any issues related to specific cases during the Princeton Q&A, but defended his view that divining the original meaning of the Constitution is the best way to interpret it.

    “The Constitution is not an organism; it’s a legal text, for Pete’s sake,” he said, reported The Daily Princetonian. “Unless you give [the laws] the meaning of those who enacted them, you’re destroying democracy.”

    NBC News' Miranda Leitsinger contributed to this report.

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  • Scalia: Judges should interpret words, not intent

    The most outspoken member of the U.S. Supreme Court, Antonin Scalia, is out with a new book about how he decides cases and why he thinks most judges go about it the wrong way. He talked at the court with NBC News Justice Correspondent Pete Williams about his book,

    By Pete Williams, NBC News justice correspondent

    In his new book about how judges should decide difficult legal issues, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says many go about it the wrong way.

    "You will see recited in opinions all the way back that the object of interpretation is to determine the intent of the drafter.  I don't believe that.  We're not governed by the drafter's intent. We're governed by laws," he told NBC News in an interview at the court.

    In the book, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts, Scalia and co-author Bryan Garner explain that a textualist, like Scalia, is someone who believes that the Constitution and laws must be read on the basis of the fairest meaning of the text.

    "Judges should not be using such extrinsic factors as, ‘What is the general purpose of the statute?’ Or ‘What did the Senate committee say when the statute was enacted?’" he said.

    But he rejects the notion that such an approach will tend to produce a conservative outcome.

    "I ought to be the pinup of the criminal defense bar, because I've written some opinions vindicating the right to trial by jury and the right to confront witnesses.  I'm a law-and-order conservative socially. I wouldn't come out that way if I were king. But that's not my job," he said.

    Asked if his views on textualism have influenced his Supreme Court colleagues, he replied, "If so, they've hidden it very well.  All my colleagues had their basic judicial philosophy fixed long before they met me."

    Some liberal members of the court have advocated a broader view, notably Stephen Breyer, arguing that judges should pay attention to a provision's purpose when the language is not clear.  "Over-emphasis on text can lead courts astray, divorcing law from life," Breyer has written.

    Scalia says the passion in his opinions, especially in his dissents, reflect his view that "there's no sin in caring passionately about doing the right thing.  I care very much about changes to the Constitution that are simply not justified."

    But, he says, some people wrongly believe strong words cause hard feelings on the bench.

    "I don't translate the hostility to bad decisions into hostility towards the people who are expounding those ideas. And if you cannot do the one without the other, you ought to look for another job.  It's a very unhappy place if you're personally antagonistic to the people whom you disagree with."

    As for his future, Justice Scalia, at age 76 the court's longest-serving member, says he intends to remain "as long as I think I'm doing it well."

    “I’m very much enjoying what I do.  This is a wonderful job. I like thinking about the law. I like figuring the right answer to legal programs.  And it’s sort of the top of the heap for a lawyer who has those interests.”