LGBT activists should be fighting for Supreme Court Justice Scalia to recuse himself from DOMA and Prop 8 Cases

By Melanie Nathan, February 28, 2913.

Based on this latest news, noting that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has vented his belief through his skeptical questions about a key portion of the Voting Rights Act, a cornerstone of the civil rights movement that brought an end to Jim Crow-era racial discrimination at the polls in the South, LGBT leadership should be insisting that Scalia recuse himself now from DOMA and Prop 8 cases.

In oral arguments over the law on Wednesday, Scalia, a stalwart of the court’s conservative wing, suggested that the Voting Rights Act was overwhelmingly reauthorized in 2006 by Congress because the nation’s politicians were afraid to oppose a “racial entitlement.”

Scalia said that each time the Voting Rights Act has been reauthorized in the past 50 years, more and more senators supported it, even though the problem of racial discrimination at the polls has decreased over that time. “Now, I don’t think that’s attributable to the fact that it is so much clearer now that we need this,” he said. “I think it is attributable, very likely attributable, to a phenomenon that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement. It’s been written about. Whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal political processes.”

The Supreme Court was hearing arguments from Shelby County, Ala., that the nine states and assorted counties covered under the 1965 law no longer need special federal oversight to prevent them from discriminating against black voters. Civil rights leaders are up in arms over  this and we the gay community should be too – Read more http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/civil-rights-leaders-outraged-over-scalia-racial-entitlement-172338534–election.html

MY COMMENT – Can you imagine Scalia’s impending dissent in the DOMA and PROP 8 Cases, scheduled for opening argument on March 26, 2013. Our LGBTI movement should be fighting for him to recuse himself  now, based on his expressed bias via his history of expressed anti-gay sentiment.