This post is so perfect it has been supercopied exactly from its site of origination, A Brooklyn Bridge:
“During an address to law students at the University of Freiberg, Scalia made an interesting observation:
“Question comes up: is there a constitutional right to homosexual conduct? Not a hard question for me. It’s absolutely clear that nobody ever thought when the Bill of Rights was adopted that it gave a right to homosexual conduct. Homosexual conduct was criminal for 200 years in every state. Easy question.”
“Women and African Americans may want to mull that over a bit.”
It would be a pretty cheap shot to invoke “Vaffanculo” again, right?
But isn’t the comment about women and African Americans off target? Isn’t that why we have the 13th, 14th, 15th, and 19th amendments?
I think the point of the comment was that if you are going to root a theory of equal rights in the way society was functioning when the Bill of Rights was adopted, then it follows that amendments such as the ones you referenced are “wrong,” or at least “wrongly interpreted” if in conflict with the way things were done 200 years ago.