“10/07/2009, 1:11pm EST”
Justice Scalia thinks free speech may include animal cruelty
Via HuffPo:
Supreme Court justices weighed arguments over a 10-year federal law that bans the creation and sale of commercially available videos that depict graphic animal cruelty, such as pit bull fights and women crushing small animals with their feet or high heels.
Justice Antonin Scalia said that the court needed to consider “the right of people who like cockfighting, who like dogfighting and who like bullfighting to present their side of the debate.”
Since we’re accustomed to Scalia rationalizing his own views into whatever case he’s investigating (ahem, Bush v. Gore), we can assume that while he is at best conflicted about how to weigh other animals’ vital interests against the torturous whims of seriously sick humans, he probably comes down on the side of the sickos.
When considering free speech, Scalia said that “it’s not up to the government to decide what are people’s worst instincts,” and as opponents of animal fighting may be more inclined to express their views than supporters, that “side of the debate is entitled to make its point as forcefully as possible.”
To Scalia it’s just a free speech case — with only humans granted a “voice”, even in the abstract — not at all related to disabling psychos who already make money under the radar from gambling on illegal animal cruelty but want to be able to sell videos of the shit too. And it isn’t the government’s role to decide what people should do and shouldn’t do — never mind that government does that all the time, and if it didn’t, Scalia would be shaking in his fat boots.
The most pathetic part is that Scalia’s myopic douchebaggery reflects an extreme imbalance in our culture and legal system in which human fancy is usually privileged over the very lives and livelihoods of any- and everything else.
