{"id":4287,"date":"2013-06-27T08:02:37","date_gmt":"2013-06-27T13:02:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=4287"},"modified":"2013-06-27T08:02:37","modified_gmt":"2013-06-27T13:02:37","slug":"never-argue-with-a-sicilian-when-homosexual-sodomy-is-on-the-line","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=4287","title":{"rendered":"Never argue with a Sicilian when homosexual sodomy is on the line"},"content":{"rendered":"
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That’s Sicilian<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It’s slippery slope week.<\/p>\n

Here’s a snippet from Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent<\/a> on yesterday’s SCOTUS ruling on gay marriage:<\/p>\n

\n

When the Court declared a constitutional right to homosexual sodomy, we were assured that the case had nothing, nothing at all to do with “whether the government must give formal recognition to any relationship that homosexual persons seek to enter.” Id., <\/span><\/span><\/i>at\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>578. Now we are told that DOMA is invalid because it “demeans the couple, whose moral and sexual choices the Constitution protects,” ante, <\/span><\/span><\/i>at 23\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwith an accompanying citation of <\/span>Lawrence<\/span><\/span><\/i>. It takes real cheek for today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s majority to assure us, as it is going out the door, that a constitutional requirement to give formal recognition to same-sex marriage is not at issue here\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwhen what has preceded that assurance is a lecture on how superior the majority\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s moral judgment in favor of same-sex marriage is to the Congress\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hateful moral judgment against it. I promise you this: The only thing that will “confine” the Court\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s holding is its sense of what it can get away with.<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Justice Scalia may indeed be correct about the alleged inconsistency; The court may have previously held that Lawrence v Texas<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0wouldn’t entail gay marriage, but then in Windsor<\/em> they use the legality of “homosexual sodomy”\u00c2\u00a0to justify not discriminating against gay marriages.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0This, he maintains, shows the slippery slope from\u00c2\u00a0“homosexual sodomy”\u00c2\u00a0to gay marriage.<\/p>\n

A few points.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0First, since I’m not a legal scholar, I don’t know if the court has to maintain its promises–or whether\u00c2\u00a0the court can make promises like this.\u00c2\u00a0 The gay marriage case wasn’t before the court at the time, and, as far as I know, the court decides only the cases it has before it.\u00c2\u00a0 It would seem completely wrong for them to\u00c2\u00a0adjudicate such things in advance<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Second, inconsistencies are not ipso facto signs of dishonesty.\u00c2\u00a0 I like to think\u00c2\u00a0my\u00c2\u00a0current correct views are inconsistent with my past incorrect ones.\u00c2\u00a0 I also\u00c2\u00a0sincerely hope that my future correct views are\u00c2\u00a0inconsistent with my current incorrect ones.<\/p>\n

Third, not all slippery slopes are fallacious.\u00c2\u00a0 The court has recognized a right to “homosexual\u00c2\u00a0sodomy.”\u00c2\u00a0 This means that homosexual relationships are not inherently\u00c2\u00a0inferior to heterosexual\u00c2\u00a0ones.\u00c2\u00a0 This\u00c2\u00a0does in fact seem to entail that homosexual commitments differ in the same regard: i.e., not at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s slippery slope week. Here’s a snippet from Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent on yesterday’s SCOTUS ruling on gay marriage: When the Court declared a constitutional right to homosexual sodomy, we were assured that the case had nothing, nothing at all to do with “whether the government must give formal recognition to any relationship that homosexual … Continue reading Never argue with a Sicilian when homosexual sodomy is on the line<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1524,178,1685,2014,1686,1687,1314],"class_list":["post-4287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-antonin-scalia","tag-gay-marriage","tag-homosexual-sodomy","tag-inconsistency","tag-lawrence-v-texas","tag-slippery-slopes","tag-specious-allegations-of-inconsistency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4287"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4291,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4287\/revisions\/4291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}