Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia
insists he doesn't hate gay people.
In a wide-ranging interview published
Monday with New
York magazine, Scalia said that he has many friends he
suspects are gay.
“I have friends that I know, or very
much suspect, are homosexual,” Scalia said. “Everybody does.”
“Have any of them come out to you?”
“No. No. Not that I know of,” he
answered.
When the interviewer asked Scalia
whether his attitude has softened toward gay people, he insisted he
does not hate gay people.
“I don't think they [my children] and
I differ very much [on the issue]. But I'm not a hater of
homosexuals at all,” Scalia said. “I still think it's Catholic
teaching that it's wrong. Okay? But I don't hate the people that
engage in it. In my legal opinions, all I've said is that I don't
think the Constitution requires the people to adopt one view or the
other.”
“Maybe the world is spinning toward a
wider acceptance of homosexual rights, and here's Scalia, standing
athwart it,” he later added. “At least standing athwart it as a
constitutional entitlement. But I have never been custodian of my
legacy.”
At one point he whispered: “I even
believe in the Devil”
“Yeah, he's a real person. Hey,
c'mon, that's standard Catholic doctrine!”
Scalia said that the Devil is “smart”
and finding success by “getting people not to believe in him or in
God.”