Well said brother at the bar. If we permit the irrationality of the madding crowd to direct the courts on what is or is not an issue ripe for justicability and who has standing to bring the issue to declaration, then the rules of procedure have no meaning. When the issue is ripe for adjudication, these guys will have their day in court but the rules of emergency equitable relief are clear and have withstood the assaults of time when others felt their issue was so critical that the sky would fall if they were not heard at once even as they avoid the nomal procedural demands. Every controverted, by definition, has at least one other side and most have more than one. All and very interest must be heard and the facts discovered so that the proper decision results. Rush to judgment is not merely a pleasant rubric to be disregarded because their may be a religious component to the dispute. Law and the rationality of its application within the court system trumps even the most desperately and truly held religious beliefs as they may--or may not--affect public policy. The mass of society is more important in the short term than any one person's religious reaction to a public policy.
I'm only a lowly political science professor who loves to teach constitutional law.
middle wrote: "If we permit the irrationality of the madding crowd to direct the courts on what is or is not an issue ripe for justicability and who has standing to bring the issue to declaration, then the rules of procedure have no meaning."
How insulting! So we are an irrational, madding crowd because we disagree with the public policy? Show me a single post in this forum that attacks the judge for not giving the plantiffs standing. Take a look and you'll see the "irrational" crowd in this case is protesting the public policy not the judge's rational.
Please forgive us for not being as enlightened as the honorable members of the bar!