These are a few excerpts from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s minority opinion when the court’s majority decided it was unconstitutional for the state of Colorado to affirm homosexuality is not a moral norm. (Scalia recently came under attack when he “admitted” he believed in the resurrection and other miracles).

“The constitutional amendment before us here is not the manifestation of a ‘desire to harm’ homosexuals, but it is rather a modest attempt by seemingly tolerant Coloradans to preserve traditional sexual mores against the efforts of a politically powerful minority to revise those mores through use of the laws.

“In holding that homosexuality cannot be singled out for disfavorable treatment, the court contradicts a decision pronounced only 10 years ago [a 1986 ruling upholding Georgia’s anti-sodomy law], and places the prestige of this institution behind the proposition that opposition to homosexuality is as reprehensible as racial or religious bias.

“Whether it is or not is precisely the cultural debate that gave rise to the Colorado constitutional amendment (and to the preferential laws against which the amendment was directed). Since the Constitution of the United States says nothing about this subject, it is left to be resolved by normal democratic means, including the democratic adoption of provisions in state constitutions.

“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.”

This article appeared in the Fall 1996 issue of Eternal Perspectives