Only this time, it wasn’t Dowd herself, but Dowd-wannabe John W. Porter
of the Portland (ME) Press-Herald. This from yesterday’s piece (hat tip: James Taranto) first misquotes Justice Antonin Scalia, and then engages in the very bigotry of which he accused Scalia.

What sets the issue off so well is what he adds just a few paragraphs later. “Let me be clear that I have nothing against homosexuals,” he says.

Really?

Actually, no, not really.

The only thing missing is a tag line saying, “Some of my best friends are gay.”

That, and a semi-accurate account of what Scalia actually wrote, namely:

Let me be clear that I have nothing against homosexuals, or any other group, promoting their agenda through normal democratic means.

As you can see, the issue was not about gays per se, it was about the ability of any group promoting its agenda through democratic means rather than crying to the courts every time they don’t get their way in the legislative arena (nevermind that gays did get their way on this very issue 37 times before, and probably would have done so in the remaining 13 states as well, eventually). So for Dowd Jr. Porter, here’s what Scalia must have really meant:

I’ve got nothing against people who promote their agenda through normal democratic means. Some of my best friends promote their agendas through normal democratic means. Now if only I could convince my *&^%ing colleagues to do the same . . .

In other words, this particular Scalia dissent meant exactly the same thing as almost every other Scalia dissent, so it had to be spruced up a bit by A.P. and Mr. Dowd Jr. Porter in order to appear newsworthy.

Dowd Jr. Porter then proceeds to use up the rest of his space beating up the straw man he has just built. Ironically, he was so busy falling over himself that he ended up writing a paragraph that was every bit as arrogant, dismissive and some-of-my-best-friends-are-black-bigoted as the fake Scalia quote he was busy attacking:

I’ve got nothing against people who live their lives according to a moral code. In fact, I admire them. I suppose, too, I would have no problem having a government based on a moral code, so long as the code used is the one I believe in.

Translation: I have nothing against people who live according to a moral code. Some of my best friends are people who live by a moral code. Unlike Justice Scalia, however, I do have a problem with other groups who promote their agendas through normal democratic means.

The rest of Dowd Jr. Porter’s piece is a waste of ones and zeros, so I’ll spare you the volume and leave you with a dowdified/porterized version that will give you the gist:

Let me be clear that I have nothing against … a definition of essential liberty that allows the state into our bedrooms to make oral sex illegal.

Well, at least he admits it. That’s always a good first step.