Paul Scalia, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's Son, Doesn't Think That Homosexuality Is A Thing

Almost a month after the Supreme Court's landmark decisions in favor of marriage equality were handed down, one son of dissenting Justice Antonin Scalia will speak in front of Courage, an organization that believes gays and lesbians should never have sex.

Paul Scalia is a Roman Catholic priest affiliated with Courage, a group that "ministers to persons with same-sex attractions," according to its website. He is also a featured speaker at Courage's annual summit, taking place this year between July 25 and July 28 at the University of St. Mary of the Lake in Mundelein, Ill.

Justice Scalia's opinions on homosexuality at this point are well known. In one of his most famous decisions regarding the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community (LGBT), Scalia wrote that a Texas law banning sodomy was simply trying to protect Texas citizens from "immoral and unacceptable" sexual behavior.

Overshadowed by his father for years, the similarly anti-gay opinions of Scalia's son Paul, however, are beginning to attract attention as well. An important tenet of the younger Scalia's position on homosexuality is his belief that being gay is not an immutable characteristic or identity.

In 2005, Scalia espoused this view in an article for the magazine First Things, where he warned about high school clubs that encourage tolerance of homosexuality, and readily label themselves or others "gay" or "homosexual."

"[Labels] presume that a person is his inclinations or attractions; he is a 'gay' or is a 'homosexual,'" Paul Scalia wrote. "At some point adults have to admit that a fifteen-year-old who claims to be 'a questioning transgendered bisexual' is really just confused."

In an example of how one might avoid these types of labels, Paul Scalia referred to homosexuality as a "phenomenon" in a 2010 piece for the Catholic Herald. That piece also warned that same-sex marriage posed a threat to marriage and future societies.

Scalia's general thought process is perhaps best summed up, however, in a 2012 article written for Humanum: Issues in Family, Culture & Science.

"In short, we should not predicate 'homosexual' of any person. That does a disservice to the dignity of the human person by collapsing personhood into sexual inclinations," Scalia writes. "Indeed, the Church is still trying to find the right vocabulary to speak about this modern phenomenon ... Either our sexuality is oriented in a certain direction (i.e. toward the one-flesh union of marriage), or it is not. We cannot speak of more than one sexual 'orientation' any more than we can think of the sun rising in more than one place (i.e. the orient)."

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Source: huffingtonpost.com
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