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April 29, 2015 11:08 am - NewsBehavingBadly.com

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It wasn’t a demonstrator warning that gay marriage would result in “burning in hell” that was so upsetting. It was Justice Antonin Scalia’s reaction, as Jeffrey Toobin writes:

In the quiet moment after the man was removed, as his shouts vanished into the hallway, Justice Antonin Scalia filled the silence with a quip. “It was rather refreshing, actually,” he said.

It may have been just a joke from the senior Associate Justice on the Court, but what kind of joke—or was it really a joke at all? Scalia probably did think that the directness of the protester was bracing—“refreshing.” Indeed, there’s every reason to believe that Scalia more or less shared the protester’s view of the immorality of homosexuality, and that he regards the Court’s toleration of gay people as one of the great disasters of his nearly three decades as a Justice.

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D.B. Hirsch
D.B. Hirsch is a political activist, news junkie, and retired ad copy writer and spin doctor. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

36 responses to Scalia’s Ugly Joke

  1. Anomaly 100 April 29th, 2015 at 11:22 am

    He’s an awful person.

    • NKR April 29th, 2015 at 1:14 pm

      You have a tiny brain.

      • Anomaly 100 April 29th, 2015 at 1:14 pm

        And I’m terribly sorry to hear about your small d*ck.

        • NKR April 29th, 2015 at 1:19 pm

          Thank you for reinforcing my observation! 😉

          • Anomaly 100 April 29th, 2015 at 1:21 pm

            You need to hone those trolling skills. You suck at it.

          • NKR April 29th, 2015 at 1:23 pm

            I bet you’ll stew all day about having lost this exchange. 🙂

          • Anomaly 100 April 29th, 2015 at 1:33 pm

            Awwes, it’s adorable that you think I’m competing with you.

          • NKR April 29th, 2015 at 1:44 pm

            You do such a good job of confirming my comments. Thank you again, sweetie!

          • Barry Shitpeas April 29th, 2015 at 1:54 pm

            Why is a snowman giving you a blowjob?

          • Bunya April 29th, 2015 at 2:01 pm

            LOL! I was wondering the same thing.

          • Barry Shitpeas April 29th, 2015 at 2:03 pm

            It would explain his aforementioned tiny penis.

          • PSzymeczek April 29th, 2015 at 6:58 pm

            Things do tend to shrink in the cold…

          • Suzanne McFly April 29th, 2015 at 4:33 pm

            Awww crap, I missed it again 🙁

          • Anomaly 100 April 29th, 2015 at 4:54 pm

            Lololol.

          • Carla Akins April 29th, 2015 at 5:29 pm

            me too

  2. NKR April 29th, 2015 at 11:31 am

    OR, he may have thought it was a sort of weirdly funny break from the serious intensity of the discussion before them.

    Liberal thought police. “To Purge and Subject”. Always on the job!

    • tracey marie April 29th, 2015 at 12:24 pm

      teabaggers, always looking for a reason to play victim.

      • NKR April 29th, 2015 at 1:13 pm

        I think you may have copied the wrong comment from your clipboard. Or Maybe you just pasted it to the wrong post. Either way it doesn’t really have any relevance to my post.

        • tracey marie April 29th, 2015 at 1:54 pm

          It has everything to do with your post and your beliefs.

  3. oldfart April 29th, 2015 at 11:38 am

    He is the ugly joke and “refreshing” would be seeing him retire.

    • NKR April 29th, 2015 at 1:17 pm

      Careful what you wish for. It’s looking more and more like we will have a Republican for the next President which would allow him to retire. But unfortunately for your misguided thinking, it’s unlikely that Ginsberg will last long enough to see another President.

      • oldfart April 29th, 2015 at 1:47 pm

        misguided thinking ? republican president ? interesting.

    • frambley1 April 29th, 2015 at 9:49 pm

      I thought I misread the title of this article. It should have been:

      ‘Scalia’s an Ugly Joke’

      (note: I am not commenting on his appearance)

  4. Glen April 29th, 2015 at 11:52 am

    I always try to see the positive interpretation of things. Scalia may have been trying to lighten the mood by suggesting that a guy ranting about gay marriage was “refreshing” (not the content of the rant, but the event of it).

    Indeed, he might have even been making a comment that gay marriage is refreshing (seriously or humorously). Or he may have just meant that, after a long day of relatively droning arguments back and forth, seeing someone with so much passion was refreshing, irrespective of the focus of their passion. Or the silence that came just after the guy was removed was refreshing.

    With nothing more than a text description that provides no context for the quote (it just says he “filled the silence” – how long was the silence? Was anything else happening? Is it possible he said it just to bring people back to focusing on the court, not the disruption?), I don’t want to jump to conclusions about why he said it, despite how tempting it is (I know more than enough about the guy to believe he *could* have meant it as an honest reaction to having someone call gay marriage an abomination, implying support).

  5. Barry Shitpeas April 29th, 2015 at 12:12 pm

    Maybe it was nothing to do with the demonstrator – maybe he had just stuck a peppermint candy up his ass.

    • StoneyCurtisll April 29th, 2015 at 5:30 pm

      High Five~!

    • JCF April 30th, 2015 at 1:13 pm

      There’s been SOMETHING stuck up there for decades! (Judging his judicial performance)

  6. StoneyCurtisll April 29th, 2015 at 5:29 pm

    Scalia is just another right wing hater whose religion is based on a bronze age mythology.

  7. Elliot J. Stamler April 29th, 2015 at 9:33 pm

    Does this surprise anybody? J. Scalia has always let his private social/cultural/religious views control his jurisprudence and by now this views are well known.

  8. thinkingwomanmillstone April 29th, 2015 at 11:01 pm

    Saint Ronnie Reagan inflicted this man on the nation….one of the worst justices appointed by one of the worst presidents. He’s never met a civil right he couldn’t endanger.

    • Larry Schmitt April 30th, 2015 at 7:56 am

      This is how I reply to someone who says it doesn’t make any difference who becomes president. The most lasting effect of a conservative in the White House is decades of people like Thomas and Roberts and Scalia, who afflict the country long after the president is gone.

      • thinkingwomanmillstone April 30th, 2015 at 8:18 am

        Absolutely true. The first Bush inflicted Thomas on us as a replacement for Thurgood Marshall. It really was quite telling of his mindset. That mindset was also quite evident in McCain’s choice of VP running mate. Thank goodness he didn’t get to appoint any SCOTUS justices.

        • Larry Schmitt April 30th, 2015 at 8:22 am

          The definition of tokenism. Any old black guy will do as a replacement for Marshall. The mental midget Thomas is as far from Marshall as you can get.

  9. bpollen April 30th, 2015 at 3:09 am

    If I had my druthers, I would rather have Scoliosis than Scalia. One of those is morally neutral. One is morally bankrupt. You decide.

  10. Snick1946 April 30th, 2015 at 7:12 pm

    He is now what, 80 or something? Just look t hi picture. Does he look like he is going to be around much longer? He looks like his heart could explode, all that fat on his face. He won’t be on the court much longer. Good luck getting anyone confirmed to replace him, though.

  11. philipcfromnyc May 18th, 2015 at 1:22 pm

    I don’t necessarily believe that Scalia was making an ugly joke, but I do believe that Scalia’s attitude towards gay men and lesbians is absolutely abhorrent. He has authored the dissents in just about every major gay rights case which the Court has handed down since he was elevated to the Court, in response to the groundbreaking opinions of Justice Anthony Kennedy, who has issued three very powerful gay rights opinions since 1996. In all three cases, Scalia belittled and mocked the reasoning of his colleagues in the majority, writing dissents which dripped with sarcasm and off-point reasoning pertaining to the issues presented in the lawsuits which were filed.

    I believe that Justice Kennedy will write the majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges, and that his opinion will be as ringing and as wide-ranging as his opinion in United States v. Windsor, 570 U.S. ___ (2013). His opinion may be joined by a concurring opinion from Chief Justice John Roberts, but I doubt that Roberts will issue a sweeping opinion on the merits…