Scalia is All for Gay Orgies

Associate Justice Antonin Scalia of the United States Supreme Court gave a lecture and answered questions in a highly attended event yesterday. Originally slated to be held in the more intimate Shaw Library, the great interest in the event saw it shifted to the Old Theater where Scalia delivered a lecture lamenting the role of judges’ ‘abstract moralizing’ as well as the notion (advanced by his own court) of a ‘living constitution’ that must continually be reinterpreted to suit contemporary circumstances. Throughout the lecture Scalia slipped in several jokes, including returning several times to the decision in a case by the European Court of Human Rights in regards to a gay orgy – not exactly the sort of stuff one might expect a stuffy judge to carry on about.

The most interesting bit, however, had to be the Q&A session that followed the lecture where Scalia seemed to revel in batting aside the various (politely worded) assaults that came from the audience. On subjects from Global Warming to the International Criminal Court and the Nuremberg Trials, he provided pithy responses, often simply rejecting the question on the basis of a disagreement on the facts. His sometimes free-wheeling comments seemed to surprise a lot of the audience, for instance when comparing democracy to various other forms of government he allowed that autocracy can lead to some accomplishments: “Hitler produced a wonderful automobile!”

Indeed, although the Justice earned some genuine laughs and his amiable, if uncompromising, style made for good banter, he still managed to stun most of the audience with comments seemingly nostalgic for  dark age purge practices (“If you lose, you die”) and expressed a somewhat cynical assessment of what kind of person might be the next nominee to the Supreme Court (a Hispanic, Protestant woman). By the time the event came to a close, he seemed to be really getting into the discussion, although he mused aloud that he wouldn’t have minded some ‘friendly questions’. There weren’t forthcoming, but he’s probably used to that.