Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said it was not up to courts to grant LGBT legal protections and in the process, compared gay people to pedophiles.

Speaking at Georgetown University Law School Monday, Scalia said the Constitution guaranteed only religious and political protections, The New York Times reported, and that it was not up to judges to determine which other minority groups deserved legal protections.

“What minorities deserve protection?” he said rhetorically. “What? It’s up to me to identify deserving minorities?”

“What about pederasts?” he asked. “What about child abusers?”

“This is a deserving minority,” he went on, jokingly. “Nobody loves them.”

He argued that it instead should be up to the democratic process to determine which minority groups deserve legal protections.