Writing in WorldNetDaily yesterday, fringe right-wing “academic” Judith Reisman recounted her close friendship with the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who would eagerly read her “research” and meet her for lunch whenever she was in town:
Good I kept a record of our tête-à-tête. I’ve tried to stay inside the bounds of our actual conversation. We talked about pornography, and I say about 70 percent of our kids are being exposed, and about private schools and religious schools having sex education that was really traumatic for children. What about the teachers? he asks; and I say this is everywhere with teachers’ permission. I tell him about the libraries having pornography on the computer screens and how that impacts the child who views it; he is nodding, agreeing, commenting. I tell him about my experiment with the peripheral vision of children flipping speedily through ladies magazines, recalling the small dog picture 30 pages past. They capture everything that arouses their interest. I say he could try that with his own grandkids, except that the ladies magazines aren’t necessarily safe anymore. He asks, what about women, seems like there are more women into pornography. I say yes; and that is a huge risk since women are the ones closest to the children; they change the diapers, and arousal is nondiscriminatory – women are becoming part of the problem.
Sitting across from him at lunch, talking and talking, I ask, “But, what shall I call you? Justice Scalia?”
“Why not call me Nino,” he answers, kind of turning in his chair.
“Well, that’s fine,” I said. “I’m Judith.”
From then on it was Nino and Judith, except that he switched to “Judy,” both of us being old enough to go back in time. In semi-formal letters and emails I would usually address him as “Justice Scalia, Sir!”
After this kind reception, I would meet with Nino in his chambers whenever I got to Washington, on average, once or twice a year – assuming he was also in town.
I recall going over my paper on pictorial pornography, answering his questions, clarifying the charts and graphs, etc. There was the time he came into the office in shorts, having left the tennis court to make his appointment with me – ever generous, ever gracious.
We exchanged books, a few of mine for a few of his. He promised to read my books. I always doubted that he read them fully, but enough so that he could opine.
When we lost him, I had been working on a paper we had talked about and that Justice Scalia was waiting to see. The paper has a history that deserves commentary for another time. It was accepted by the Thurgood Marshall School of Law Journal on Gender, Race, and Justice, titled “Nearly 60 Years After His Death, Alfred Kinsey’s Pansexual Worldview Takes Root In Marriage Decisions” (by Judith A. Reisman and Mary E. McAlister, Esq.).
Reisman, as we’ve noted before, is a radical right-wing activist who wants pornography outlawed, among other things:
- Has said that sex ed turns children into prostitutes and “little sexual deviants.”
- Claimed that sex education classes are designed to brainwash children into thinking they might be gay, transgender or “all kinds of other things” and “these kids become fodder for adult predators, that’s exactly what they become.”
- Asserting that Gay-Straight Alliance clubs and anti-bullying campaigns are modeled on Hitler Youth efforts to “sever schoolchildren from their parents’ religious and sexual training.”
- Called GLSEN “a modern version of the Hitler Youth” and said that “the whole point” of GLSEN’s anti-bullying efforts was to promote pedophilia.
- Claimed that “the aim of homosexual males and now increasingly females is not to have sex with other old guys and get married but to obtain sex with as many boys as possible.”
- Joined her Liberty colleague Mat Staver in Jamaica in December for a conference organized by those working to preserve laws criminalizing consensual gay sex.
- Wrote that condoms are not meant for anal sex and called for a “class action lawsuit by AIDS victims and their loved ones” against the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Planned Parenthood and teachers and school systems that promoted condom use.
- Warned that the Boy Scouts’ vote to end the ban on participation by gay youth would lead to increased pedophilia, and agreed with right-wing radio host Rick Wiles that the Boy Scouts change was about “getting sexual predators into the Boy Scouts.”
Last year, Reisman joined various other anti-gay activists, as well as several GOP presidential hopefuls and members of Congress, in appearing in Janet Porter’s anti-gay film “Light Wins,” where she asserted that public schools should face class action lawsuits from parents for illegally “grooming” children for sex:
