Persecuting Mormons Doesn't Bother Scalia

Just came across this gem and I thought I would share it. It is Justice Scalia comparing discrimination against homosexuals in our age to discrimination against polygamist Mormons in the 19th century. He concludes that there was nothing wrong (at least constitutionally) with discriminating against Mormons, and so there is nothing wrong with discriminating against gay people. This favorable endorsement of religious/sexual intolerance in American history is fairly shocking.

This is also the text where Scalia predicts that if the Courts protect the rights of homosexuals, then they will also have to protect polygamists against discrimination. (Oh No! Can't be extending Constitutional protection to the Brown family!)

We, as Mormons, should be the biggest advocates for gay rights. Mormons were the gays of the 1800s. (Of course gays were also the gays of the 1800s.)

Anyways, here it is:

"But there is a much closer analogy, one that involves precisely the effort by the majority of citizens to preserve its view of sexual morality statewide, against the efforts of a geographically concentrated and politically powerful minority to undermine it. The constitutions of the States of Arizona, Idaho, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Utah to this day contain provisions stating that polygamy is ‘forever prohibited.’ …  The Court's disposition today suggests that these provisions are unconstitutional, and that polygamy must be permitted in these States on a state-legislated, or perhaps even local option, basis—unless, of course, polygamists for some reason have fewer constitutional rights than homosexuals."

--Justice Antonin Scalia, dissenting opinion in Romer v. Evans.