At today's NOM hate #march4marriage rally in DC, NOM Chairman John Eastman compared last year's SCOTUS DOMA decision (striking down Section 3 of the Defense Of Marriage Act) to its earlier (infamous) Dred Scott ruling.
From Right Wing Watch:
Eastman cited Justice Scalia’s “call to arms” in his dissent to the DOMA decision, paraphrasing it as, “the court should never take away controversial issues away from the voters in this country.”
“The last time the court tried to do that a century and a half ago on the slavery question, Abraham Lincoln refused to comply,” he said.
From Wikipedia:
Dred Scott (circa 1799 – September 17, 1858) was a slave in the United States who unsuccessfully sued for his freedom and that of his wife and their two daughters in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case of 1857, popularly known as the "Dred Scott Decision." The case was based on the fact that although he and his wife Harriet Scott were slaves, they had lived with his master, Dr. John Emerson, in states and territories where slavery was illegal according to both state laws and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, including Illinois and Minnesota (which was then part of the Wisconsin Territory). The United States Supreme Court decided 7–2 against Scott, finding that neither he nor any other person of African ancestry could claim citizenship in the United States, and therefore Scott could not bring suit in federal court under diversity of citizenship rules. Moreover, Scott's temporary residence outside Missouri did not bring about his emancipation under the Missouri Compromise, which the court ruled unconstitutional as it would improperly deprive Scott's owner of his legal property.
While Chief Justice Roger B. Taney had hoped to settle issues related to slavery and Congressional authority by this decision, it aroused public outrage and deepened sectional tensions between the northern and southern U.S. states. President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, and the post-Civil War Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments nullified the decision.
It is beyond me how last year's SCOTUS DOMA decision bears ANY relationship with this horrendous ruling back in the 19th century. Mr. Eastman's hyperbolic comments are both quite extreme and very offensive.