During a tour stop to Princeton University this week, United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia reiterated his opposition to homosexuality and expressed the need for discussion on morality in America.

Scalia was visiting the university as part of a promotional effort for his new book Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts. During his presentation, a homosexual student reportedly asked Scalia why he believes sodomy is just as wrong as bestiality and murder.

“Justice Scalia, I’m gay, and as somebody who is gay I find these comparisons extraordinarily offensive,” said the San Francisco native, a freshman.

He went on to outline comments that Scalia had made in case decisions, such as Romer v. Evans, decided in 1996.

“I had thought that one could consider certain conduct reprehensible— murder, for example, or polygamy, or cruelty to animals— and could exhibit even ‘animus’ toward such conduct. Surely that is the only sort of ‘animus’ at issue here: moral disapproval of homosexual conduct,” the justice wrote.

The student also pointed to Scalia’s dissent in Lawrence v. Texas, in which he stated, “The Texas statute undeniably seeks to further the belief of its citizens that certain forms of sexual behavior are ‘immoral and unacceptable,’ — the same interest furthered by criminal laws against fornication, bigamy, adultery, adult incest, bestiality, and obscenity.”

Scalia, a Roman Catholic, then defended his position as the freshman asked whether the justice had any regret for his comments.

“If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against these other things?” he replied. “Of course we can. I don’t apologize for the things I raised. I’m not comparing homosexuality to murder. I’m comparing the principle that a society may not adopt moral sanctions, moral views, against certain conduct. I’m comparing that with respect to murder and that with respect to homosexuality.”

“It’s a form of argument that I thought you would have known, which is called the ‘reduction to the absurd,'” Scalia stated.

As previously reported, the United States Supreme Court is set to take up the issue of homosexual “marriage” next year. Earlier this month, the nine justices agreed to accept a case relating to California’s Proposition 8, a measure that sought to add an amendment to the California state Constitution to protect the Biblical definition of marriage, as well as a case challenging the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

Deliberations are expected to begin in March, with a decision sometime in June 2013.

While Scalia has expressed opposition to homosexuality, he has stated that he is not an abortion abolitionist.

“[I]ndeed, there are anti-abortion people who think that the Constitution requires a state to prohibit abortion. They say that the equal protection clause requires that you treat a helpless human being that’s still in the womb the way you treat other human beings. I think that’s wrong,” Scalia explained in a 2008 60 Minutes interview. “I think when the Constitution says that persons are entitled to equal protection of the laws, I think it clearly means walking-around persons.”

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