Can we speak ill of the dead now?

I presume that the desire to not speak ill of the dead comes with a time limit after which it's perfectly okay. In updating prawnworks, I came across this piece from early this January. The late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia advocated an absolutely dreadful idea, that government should take the side of religion over non-religion. 

Sorry, but I see a very short, steep and slippery slope between religion vs non-religion and, say, Roman Catholic vs Baptist. People might recall that, back in the old days, being declared a heretic, a non-Christian, someone who was Christian, but believed the wrong things, or was a witch, led to many people being burned at the stake and executed in many other ways.