Gay, Gay Marriage

Apparently, Prop 8 Supporters Are Now Comfortable With Everybody Knowing They're Raging Bigots

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Judge Vaughn Walker, the man who overturned Proposition 8 in California, is gay. He even admitted it. You know what that means, don’t you? [Wink, wink]. I mean, the man is gay so clearly… like, do I have to spell it out for you? He’s a man who likes to have sex with other men, how can he possibly be impartial when it comes to whether or not God wants marriage defined as something exclusively between a man and a woman. Well, not God exactly, I mean that law… and the voters, you know. The law that has traditionally defined marriage as a union between man and woman under God. You know what I’m getting at. How can he impartially judge the law on this matter when he wants to do it in the butt with another man??? That’s got to make him tainted or damaged or somehow unfit, I mean d’uh, right?

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, at long last the anti-gay marriage movement has been unmasked for what it is; disgusting homophobia and bigotry wrapped up in voter referendums and moving documents. Yesterday afternoon ProtectMarriage (a supporter of the California ban on gay marriage) moved to have Judge Vaughn Walker’s ruling set aside because Walker is gay. I’m being entirely serious; the sole basis for their legal argument here is that Walker is gay and in a relationship. Somehow, this made Walker unfit for deciding whether or not gays and lesbians should have the legal right to marry.

ProtectMarriage’s indignation would be more interesting to me if it wasn’t so covered in crap. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t recall them arguing that married men cannot impartially preside over divorce proceedings.

But I’m sorry, to even pretend like the above are useful analogies gives ProtectMarriage more credit than they deserve. They world they propose living in is truly ludicrous…

The WSJ Law Blog pulls out a great quote from Erwin Chemerinsky about this nonsense:

Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California, Irvine School of Law, said that no U.S. court had ever ruled that a judge’s personal identity was sufficient reason for disqualification. “I think it is offensive to say that a judge can’t hear this case because he is gay or lesbian,” he said. “By that reasoning, a black judge couldn’t have heard challenges to segregation law.”

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Oh, but Dean Chemerinsky, I’m sure the ProtectMarriage people would love to live in a world where black judges couldn’t preside over civil rights cases and female judges couldn’t preside over cases where female reproductive rights were at issue. Trust me, if ProtectMarriage wins a case like this, those legal challenges will be soon to follow.

They won’t win of course. First of all, I don’t even see how they have standing to challenge Walker’s ruling. Aside from the state of California, I don’t see how anybody has standing to challenge the ruling since gay marriage doesn’t hurt anybody. Maybe a gay person who gets gay married and then realizes marriage kind of blows (and not in a good way, except on your birthday) would have standing, but that would be a controversial case.

And even if somehow the Prop 8 proponents overcome the standing issue, I don’t think we’re living in a world where the Ninth Circuit is going to condone bigotry against federal judges based on their private lives.

So what’s more shocking here is the gall — the chutzpah, if you will — to just roll into court with a brief dripping with your own homophobic idiocy, dropping it down on a clerk and being like “whatssup.” He’s gay and he might want to be married and so he can’t judge whether or not it’s okay to deny people a civil right?

We’ve got some judges out there, you’re not going to believe this but they truly and honestly believe that God doesn’t want them to practice birth control. I’m serious, they believe in an almighty being whose will can yet be flummoxed by the advanced technology of latex or a hormone pill, and so they and their wives go out there and have broods of children. Like rabbits. It’s weird man, that’s certainly not how I or anybody I know rolls. But hey, despite this we still trust them to preside over cases that affect whether or not people can have access to birth control, the very same birth control they believe God abhors. See, we trust them to put aside their personal beliefs when they come into a courtroom because that’s what judges are supposed to do.

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I don’t see why anybody would expect Vaughn Walker to behave any differently. Unless of course they are a raging bigot.

Proposition 8 supporters say ruling should be voided [Los Angeles Times]
Prop. 8 Ruling Challenged on Grounds of Judge’s Sexual Orientation [WSJ Law Blog]

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