While Boy Scouts of America  lifts its ban on gay members and professional sports athletes casually come out of the closet, several justices on the U.S. Supreme Court seem stuck in a time warp, shackled to archaic visions of the past as they listen to arguments over gay marriage.

According to New York Times reporting, Justice Samuel Alito argued that now was not the right time for marriage equality, saying that marriage has been around for thousands of years but same sex marriage is newer than “cell phones and the Internet.”

Apparently, Alito thinks that gay marriage is some sort of new fangled contraption that needs to be tried out for a while before it can be sold on the open market.

Chief Justice Roberts couldn’t understand why gay couples were not content with civil unions, suggesting that the fight for marriage equality was simply about “labels.”

No, Justice Roberts, it is about dignity, equality, human rights, and not being treated like a second-class citizen — not to mention being protected and provided for under the law.

The court’s most conservative member, Antonin Scalia, seemed beside himself with glee as he berated marriage equality lawyer Theodore Olson, coyly asking him “when it became unconstitutional to exclude homosexual couples” from marriage.

Sadly, nobody has welcomed Scalia into the 21st century where gay couples are not referred to as homosexuals. And the answer to your question, Mr. Scalia, is that if gay couples could easily get married, they wouldn’t be fighting for their rights in front of the likes of you.

But of course Scalia knew that, which is the saddest part of this spectacle.

Since it takes four judges to grant acceptance for a case, Scalia and the other three ultra-conservative judges probably sensed public opinion moving inexorably toward gay marriage acceptance, prompting them to make a stand against it, and hence the decision to take up the polarizing subject, according to the New York Times.

As the country becomes a more diverse accepting place, four or five out-of-touch conservative judges may rule that gay citizens are not “full” people under the law, and thus shouldn’t be allowed to marry.

For the sake of the other 314 million Americans, let it be four judges and not five.