In considering a run for the state Supreme Court, the father of five children says, "I expected to be attacked here because that’s what’s happening all across the country‐you know, ’Are you now or have you ever been associated with the Knights of Columbus?'" he said, chuckling. "Interrogating people [nominated for office] if they went to a Bible study or the Knights of Columbus, that’s where we are as a country."
The media characterization of his writing is often misleading. For example, a ThinkProgress hit piece claims that, in a blog post paraphrasing former Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent on a case about Texas sodomy laws, Hagedorn "compared homosexuality to bestiality." In fact, his post simply notes the U.S. Constitution has nothing to say about any supposed rights to sex with anyone or anything, then essentially paraphrases Scalia’s dissent, which two other justices joined.
That dissent said striking a law against sodomy on the grounds that states are constitutionally forbidden from banning any sexual activity citizens consider "immoral and unacceptable" also eliminates the legal basis for "criminal laws against fornication, bigamy, adultery, adult incest, bestiality, and obscenity." Scalia instead invited LGBT activists to persuade their fellow citizens that sodomy bans were wrong and change the laws, rather than using courts to eliminate the legal basis on which states criminalize socially disapproved sexual behaviors.
While a law student in 2005, Hagedorn simply wrote he agreed with this legal analysis. It doesn’t compare bestiality and homosexuality in anything except the basis for former laws against them. That both were illegal on this basis until relatively recently is simply a fact. Yet like ThinkProgress, several Wisconsin outlets quoted context-free snippets of Hagedorn’s post in a rush to paint him as a bigot.