Posted on 04/26/2011 6:29:58 PM PDT by jazusamo
To hear them describe it, defenders of traditional marriage during last year’s trial on California’s Proposition 8 felt like the visiting team in a game with a hometown referee.
It was an open secret that District Court Chief Judge Vaughn Walker was gay, although he had never publicly acknowledged it. Under the circumstances, challenging his objectivity in a case on the constitutionality of “one man, one woman” marriage carried substantial risks, such as angering the judge or being accused of “outing” a public figure, without any promise of success.
The circumstances changed when Judge Walker, now retired, was quoted in an April 6 article by Reuters saying that he had been involved in a same-sex relationship for more than 10 years. Now traditional-marriage proponents are openly disputing the judge’s impartiality, culminating in Monday’s motion to throw out his decision overturning Proposition 8.
The situation has raised thorny issues over how much judges should be required to disclose about their personal lives - and whether a judge’s identity can be considered a conflict of interest. With a raft of lawsuits in support of same-sex marriage working their way through the legal system, it may be only a matter of time before the Walker scenario repeats itself in another courtroom.
The gay-rights community has dismissed the challenges as a last-ditch attempt to skirt the judge’s decision. Judge Walker ruled in August that Proposition 8 violated the California Constitution’s equal-protection clause, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has placed a hold on the order until an appeal can be heard.
“They’re grasping at straws. It’s truly desperation at this point,” said Rick Jacobs, chairman of the Courage Campaign in Sacramento.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
I did not like or agree with the judge’s ruling. That said, his being Gay, which we in the “legal community” all knew, no more disqualifies him than being straight would.
It would be different only if he and his partner planned to get married at the time he made the decision.
No way the decision gets tossed on this.
This judge should have recused himself immediately, because he could not possibly been impartial. Yet he chose not to and legislated from the bench. He put his own homo-happy agenda above the will of the people of California. It does not get any more egregiously biased and wrong than that. It should clearly be enough to get his ruling reversed.
What are you talking about? Everyone knows that Liberals are not biased, even when they use the power of the government to make rulings that benefit themselves personally.
Unlike conservatives, you see, Liberals are able to separate, to compartmentalize their personal goals from their public trust. The fact that we almost always discover (sometimes years later) that what they decide for the public happens to coincide exactly with what would benefit them personally is of absolutely no importance, of no significance, whatsoever.
Of course, when a Republican gets caught using public power to benefit himself personally, why, then it's an outrage, a crime right up there with the Sack of Rome. That's because Republicans are bad, you see, while Democrats and other left-wingers are good.
It's just logic.
Were he and his partner already married?
If not, how does anyone know they were not planning marriage?
As a lay person that’s something I believe we have to take his word on.
If he could materially benefit from deciding one way, would that not disqualify him from sitting over this case?
Well, law does train people to be sophists, and sophists by definition disdain the truth. But the judge was in effect saying: my opinion is that I have the right to marry, and so the law must be made to conform to my opinion.
To put things in the perspective of the rule of law of the past 1600 or so years, if he'd been jailed for sodomy, disbarred, and tossed off the bench, his personal life wouldn't be an inconvenient issue for him now.
Did his partner cut him off?
I don’t know what his plans are/were. I don’t know him personally.
He wrote a hateful absurd anti religious opinion.
Yes.
I’m straight - with a herd of kids and grandkids. Does that alone make me more qualified to hear the case than a gay judge? I think not.
Just another c*ck s*cker, no surprise.
I’m not against homos, but they are making me be against them.
I think that you don't know how wrong you are.
I think this was always the plan of the activist gay movement. Imagine the plan:
1. Gay Activist Judge In The Closet takes the highest profile gay case in California history.
2. Gay Activist Judge In The Closet rules that marriage vote is unconstitutional.
3. Gay Activist Judge In The Closet acknowledges his deception.
4. NEXT MOVE: Gay Activist Judge uses his deception to force future courts to allow gay judges on gay activist cases. Demands no need for recusal due to sexual orientation -- claims bigotry and prejudice.
-PJ
Do you believe that the existence of gay marriage would devalue traditional marriage?
-PJ
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