No matter how hard a society tries to shake off a backward practice or way of thinking, if the… No matter how hard a society tries to shake off a backward practice or way of thinking, if the effort ends successfully, you can always count on someone to be “that guy.”

The infamous iconoclast is faithfully on hold to, whenever it can get the most publicity, cramp the style of societal progress.

The unsuccessful 1948 presidential candidate James Strom Thurmond — who ran under the unpopular States’ Rights Democratic Party and later fought against the 1964 Civil Rights Act — was an example of “that guy.” He defended his firmly rooted segregationist position well into the 1970s, long after such thinking had been widely abandoned.

Today we find ourselves in a different social context, but even among a new slew of social issues people can, and commonly do, don the mask of “that guy.”

Particularly regarding the topic of discrimination against the LGBT community, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia recently demonstrated “that guy” behaviors, which outraged women’s rights activists and various members of the media.

In an interview with California Lawyer Magazine published earlier this week, Scalia rejected the widely agreed-upon idea that the 14th Amendment protects women, gays and lesbians from discrimination.

“Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn’t. Nobody ever thought that that’s what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that,” he said in the interview.

Scalia’s controversial statements come at the heels of one of the most important triumphs for equal rights in decades, the repeal of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” the Clinton-era law that forced gay and lesbian members of the military to keep their sexual orientation secret, lest they face dismissal.

In a rare Saturday session on Dec. 18, backed by 67 percent of the nation, 63 senators voted to allow gays and lesbians to openly serve in the military for the first time in U.S. history. Some called the historic moment akin to when the military was racially desegregated in the 1950s.

So you can understand why, under these circumstances, so many are aiming their vitriol at Scalia.

Vitriol aside, if all you care about is bare-bones technicalities, Scalia’s point is not unfounded — the 14th Amendment hasn’t always been interpreted to prohibit sexual discrimination.

For proof, you can look up the 1873 Bradwell v. Illinois case when the Supreme Court denied a woman a law degree so she would instead fulfill her “noble” office of motherhood.

However, four decades of judicial precedent clearly disagree with Scalia. Ever since the 1971 Reed v. Reed case, “the Court has repeatedly recognized that neither federal nor state government acts compatibly with the equal protection principle when a law or official policy denies to women, simply because they are women, full citizenship stature,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in 1996.

But instead of calling for Scalia’s resignation or impeachment and injecting the blogosphere with floods of rage — note: “that guy’s” behavior generally gets even worse with that kind of attention — people actually interested in ending inequality would best devote their energies to other efforts.

It’s surely scary that a man with a lifetime supply of judicial power can have such an antiquated view on discrimination. But given how Scalia is largely alone among his fellow justices in this view, campaigning for presidents who appoint justices with views that better reflect the times should be a larger priority than going after a single sitting “that guy.”