Brownback Hypocrite on Foreign Law

Here's a bit I don't get. Apparently people have brought up Norway where gay marriage has been legal since 1993. Last night the Jon Stewart showed a clip of Sam Brownback (R-KS) talking about this. Aren't these the same people who side with Scalia that foreign law should have no bearing on US law? Brownback even sponsored legislation so that "the Supreme Court would be prohibited from basing their opinions on the rule of foreign law". But it's ok to bring up Norway in the Senate on this topic?

The furor over the use of foreign law in Supreme Court decsions is from Roper v Simmons in 2005. The question was whether the death penalty applied to a juvenile was cruel and unusual. The opinion was 25 pages plus appendices, three and a half pages talk about foreign law. Some quotes:

"Our determination that the death penalty is disproportionate punishment for offenders under 18 finds confirmation in the stark reality that the United States is the only country in the world that continues to give official sanction to the juvenile death penalty"

"Article 37 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which every country in the world has ratified save for the United States and Somalia, contains an express prohibition on capital punishment for crimes committed by juveniles under 18."

"only seven countries other than the United States have executed juvenile offenders since 1990: Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and China. Since then each of these countries has either abolished capital punishment for juveniles or made public disavowal of the practice."

"The opinion of the world community, while not controlling our outcome, does provide respected and significant confirmation for our own conclusions. "

The reason this issue is usually associated with Ginsburg is that shortly after the Roper decision she spoke out in favor of the practice.

So what does looking at Scandinavia show us here? In 2004, Stanley Kurtz wrote The End of Marriage in Scandinavia and a few months later his claims were debunked.

Can we get back to real issues?