There was a jaw-dropping exchange during oral arguments over marriage equality today, when anti-gay Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia traded sarcastic bars with pro-equality attorney Ted Olson.
Scalia followed-up on his colleague Chief Justice John Roberts's argument that marriage was never intended to exclude same-gender couples by denying that the case for the freedom to marry had any Constitutional standing at all:
"We don't prescribe law for the future. We decide what the law is. I'm curious, when did it become unconstitutional to exclude homosexual couples from marriage? 1791? 1868? When the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted?"
Scalia's words can be interpreted as an attempt to back Olson into a rhetorical corner with cutesy sarcasm, but Olson shot back pointedly -- piercing Scalia's logic by comparing the denial of marriage equality to gays to segregation and miscegenation law from generations past:
"When did it become unconstitutional to prohibit interracial marriages? When did it become unconstitutional to assign children to separate schools?"
Scalia was unable to respond to the question except to keep demanding loudly for a specific date.
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