The Supreme Court's decision to legalise same-sex marriages across the United States does not represent the sentiment of majority of Americans, one of the four justices who opposed the controversial ruling asserted.
In a strongly worded dissent to five of his colleagues' decision to allow same-sex marriages in the US, Justice Antonin Scalia said the opinion that gays and lesbians have the fundamental right to get married under the Constitution is "lacking even a thin veneer of law."
The Roman Catholic justice also described the ruling a "threat to American democracy."
"The opinion is couched in a style that is as pretentious as its content is egotistic. It is one thing for separate concurring or dissenting opinions to contain extravagances, even silly extravagances, of thought and expression; it is something else for the official opinion of the court to do so," Scalia said in his dissenting opinion.
He also criticised the entire Supreme Court for supposedly subverting the will of the American people.
"To allow the policy question of same-sex marriage to be considered and resolved by a select, patrician, highly unrepresentative panel of nine is to violate a principle even more fundamental than no taxation without representation: no social transformation without representation," Scalia asserted.
"Today's decree says that my ruler, and the ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court," he added.
The high court justice also said that the Supreme court ruling on same-sex marriage "robs the people of the most important liberty."
He also maintained that the true nature of marriage is "its enduring bond," in which "two persons together can find other freedoms, such as expression, intimacy, and spirituality."
"These justices know that limiting marriage to one man and one woman is contrary to reason; they know that an institution as old as government itself, and accepted by every nation in history until 15 years ago, cannot possibly be supported by anything other than ignorance or bigotry," Scalia said.
"And they are willing to say that any citizen who does not agree with that, who adheres to what was, until 15 years ago, the unanimous judgment of all generations and all societies, stands against the Constitution," he added.
