U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, an avowed conservative and self-styled “originalist” in his interpretations of the law, reportedly told the Utah State Bar Association on Saturday that he’s okay with discussing whether orgies relieve social tension and claimed that judicial activism in Germany was partially to blame for the rise of the Nazi regime and the Holocaust.

ADVERTISEMENT

Word of Scalia’s claims comes by way of The Aspen Times, which reports that Scalia’s speech was titled, “Mullahs of the West: Judges as Moral Arbiters.”

The court’s well-known arch conservative reportedly told attendees that in his “originalist” view, judges who interpret the law “in the spirit of the age” are dealing a disservice to society by altering the original intent of the law.

He emphasized that the main point of his talk was to push back against the politicization of judicial appointments, which he called a natural outgrowth from judicial activism.

The Aspen Times added that Scalia opened his speech with a clear analogy to Germany in the years before the Nazi Party — during a time Scalia believed Germany to be “the most advanced country in the world” much like the U.S. today. Judges then, he contended, were very open to new interpretations of the law, also like the U.S. today.

Scalia added that he does not believe judges should weigh in on moral issues like abortion, same sex marriage, capital punishment or, strangely enough, orgies.

ADVERTISEMENT

“I accept, for the sake of argument, that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged,” he reportedly said. “Rather, I am questioning the propriety, indeed the sanity, of having a value-laden decision such as that made for the entire society by unelected judges.”

Scalia recently sided with the court’s minority in voting to keep the federal prohibition on LGBT marriages in place. He’s long compared same sex relations to reprehensible acts like beastiality and murder, which he maintains legislative bodies have a compelling interest to regulate.