[media-credit name=’Elizabeth Gaffaney’ align=’alignnone’ width=’648′][/media-credit]Nationally distinguished writer, radio talk-show host and lawyer Phyllis Schlafly presented a conservative perspective regarding judicial courts, judges, religion and marriage to both supporters and protesters in Science Hall Thursday evening.

Schlafly heavily critiqued the current court system, calling so-called activist judges the “hot subject” of the courts.

“[The judges] are trying to rewrite our Constitution and make the important social and political decisions of our time rather than have them made by our elected representatives,” Schlafly said.

She said “left-coast” judges are currently hostile toward religion and do not have a right to deem the innocuous “Pledge of Allegiance” unconstitutional for classroom use on the grounds of its mention of God. She said “ridiculous” judges have also recently rejected monuments and plaques engraved with the Ten Commandments, on the basis of the secular First Amendment.

“These judges [are] supremacists. A supremacist is somebody who thinks he’s better than the rest of us, somebody who thinks he’s supreme over the other branches of government, the will of the American people and the U.S. Constitution,” Schlafly said.

She said supremacist Massachusetts judges pretended to interpret their state Constitution and redefine the sanctity of marriage as an “evolving paradigm” contrary to the real reading that clearly defines marriage as a “union between a man and a woman.”

Schlafly mentioned the Defense of Marriage Act, passed by Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996, noting Sen. John Kerry did not sign the bill and wished for supremacist judges to rule.

“That is the game plan of the liberal movement … what they cannot get through the Congress and state legislatures, they are planning on getting some supremacist judge to decide,” Schlafly said.

Schlafly argued that supremacist judges in Roe v. Wade overlooked the Constitution.

“Roe v. Wade created the right for a woman to kill her unborn baby,” she said.

Schlafly closed her lecture by rejecting the “living and evolving” method of constitutional interpretation. Problems will be solved if Congress passes laws to remove radical judicial power, she added.

Numerous protesters entered the lecture hall as Schlafly began her speech. Students and demonstrators said afterward that they disagreed with the conservative’s arguments.

“I think her ideologies and thoughts are really regressive as far as social policy goes,” University of Wisconsin senior Terry Schmidt said. “We as a society have a right to be in homosexual relationships or have abortions.”

But others said the speech was enlightening because Schlafly represented a conservative voice seldom heard on a liberal campus.

“I came to this lecture today because I wanted to hear something different than the normal negative liberal messages you get on campus,” UW sophomore and first Vice Chair of College Republicans Erica Christenson said.

Christenson added that Schlafly “speaks the truth” about how the Constitution was designed, adding many things that seem out of the control of the American public are really in control of the public.

According to Christenson, constituents can contact their legislators and urge their voices to be heard on issues affecting the court system.