When the Supreme Court ruled two weeks ago on marriage, Justice Antonin Scalia delivered a blistering dissent from the bench. He was critical of the tone and argument of Justice Anthony Kennedy when he and four other justices declared DOMA unconstitutional.

Scalia said they resorted to calling opponents of gay marriage “enemies of the human race.” He said “to defend traditional marriage is not to condemn, demean, or humiliate those who would prefer other arrangements, any more than to defend the Constitution of the United States is to condemn, demean, or humiliate other constitutions.” But the justices implied that supporters of DOMA had as their “purpose to
‘disparage,’ ‘injure,’ ‘degrade,’ ‘demean,’ and ‘humiliate’ our fellow human beings, our fellow citizens, who are homosexual.”

Scalia observed that Kennedy wrote that people who supported DOMA did so because they wanted to injure, degrade, and humiliate homosexuals. It is worth mentioning that Senators Chuck Schumer, Pat Leahy, Harry Reid, and Joe Biden voted for DOMA. President Bill Clinton signed DOMA into law. I doubt Justice Kennedy was talking about them.

Actually, Justice Kennedy was talking about you (assuming you support traditional marriage). This decision by the Supreme Court illustrates how the debate about marriage is changing. It is no longer a disagreement (you have one view, I have another). It has become a moral crusade (I am right and moral, you are wrong and evil).

Paul Diamond is a barrister in the U.K. who has been defending Christians in their courts. The last time he was in my radio studio he recounted how the British courts used similar arguments to prosecute Christians. He noted that “once they label you as a hater, they can do anything to you.” Americans who oppose same-sex marriage are being labelled as such. Sadly we seem to be heading down the same road as England.