Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on
Friday told a group of lawyers that there is no right to 'homosexual
conduct' in the United States Constitution.
Scalia made his remarks while
addressing the North Carolina Bar Association in Asheville, North
Carolina. The high court is expected to release two decisions
related to gay nuptials next week.
(Related: SCOTUS
rulings on Prop 8, DOMA likely this week.)
In a speech, titled Mullahs of the
West: Judges as Moral Arbiters, Scalia listed gay rights as among
the issues that should be decided by the public and not unelected
judges, the Charlotte
Observer reported.
Moral questions coming before the
courts, Scalia said, have no “scientifically demonstrable right
answer.”
He said that when judges find rights to
“homosexual conduct” or abortion in the Constitution, they are in
error.
Scalia, considered one of the court's
most conservative justices, told the crowd that he applies the words
in the U.S. Constitution as they were understood by its authors.
Such issues, he added, “were criminal
throughout the United States and remained so for several centuries.”