Anti-Gay Activists Want to Judge

The anti-gay zealots, Maggie Gallagher, Peter LaBarbera, Kris Mineau, Tony Perkins, etc... have been piling on the federal judge who ruled last week that Proposition 8 was unconstitutional. They even started BEFORE his ruling came out (because they knew how weak their case was). Because they can't refute the facts of the case they have been making personal attacks on the justice.

By far the biggest attack on him has been about his perceived sexual orientation. They claim that he is gay (or homosexual because they love to use the word SEX) and because of this fact he should have recused himself.

So I finally read an article that sums up the whole story really well. Here is a snippet from the Miami Herald:

According to this line of ``thinking,'' a homosexual may competently judge a traffic dispute or an assault charge, but not anything having to do with, well . . . being a homosexual. For that, you need a judge who is as straight as the crease in George Will's pants.

But there is a hole in that ``logic'' wide enough to dance the Rockettes through. Every individual is a compilation of culture, experience, opinions, emotions and personal biases, so every judge brings baggage to the table.

But we trust a judge to put that baggage aside and decide an issue on its merits. You don't ask him to recuse himself unless something he has said or done suggests a conflict of interest.

Walker's critics judge him biased not because of something he's said or done, but because of something he supposedly is. By that logic, we must consider every heterosexual judge who ever ruled against gay rights as biased. Indeed, that reasoning would require women judges to recuse themselves from cases with women plaintiffs, Jewish judges to abandon cases with Jewish defendants, white judges to leave cases tried by white lawyers.

Nor is that remote and abysmal possibility what's most offensive here. No, what truly rankles is the implicit suggestion that only straight people can fairly and dispassionately judge when and if gay men and lesbians should be granted equality -- and that straights have an unquestioned right to make that judgment.

You know they are getting desperate when the harshest critique they can give the judge is that "he's gay." What about the FACTS people?