Oh, what a judge will do to be feted by the trendy lefties

"Judge overturns Calif. gay marriage ban" (Yahoo!news, August 4, 2010). Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker's 136-page ruling cited the term "hostile" twice, "hate" 12 times, "fear" 15 times, "prejudice" 15 times, "free" or "freedom" 20 times, and "equal" or "equality" 65 times. The ruling is clearly one assuming that "gay rights" based on a choice of values and lifestyle may be treated no differently than "civil rights" indiscriminate of color, gender, ethnicity, etc. It thereby effectively conflates the distinction between differences between chosen value-orientations with ontological differences in persons, treating each identically. Minimally, it assumes that the fundamental question of whether sexual orientation is a chosen disposition or an ontological property of a person's being (both have been argued) is the province of jurisprudence and may be settled by a judge in a court of law, overriding voter's rights. All considerations are reduced to the common denominator of liberal sentiment and "compassion." One may as well extend the benign hand of juridical compassion to consenting adults committing cannibalism in the privacy of their own homes.

Another article, "Prop. 8 judge strikes down same-sex marriage ban" (San Francisco Chronicle, August 5, 2010), reports:

... Douglas Napier, an attorney who defended Prop. 8, as a distraction in a case that he said should have been about voters' rights. He called the ruling, which was the result of a nonjury trial in January, a legal "bump in the road."

"Those that want to uphold traditional family values are going to be outraged," said Napier, of the Alliance Defense Fund of Scottsdale, Ariz. "The whole nation is watching, and the whole nation should be quaking to think that a single judge sitting in California can reverse the will of 7 million voters" (emphasis added).

Sir Thomas More, on trial, to his accuser, Richard Rich:

"Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world. But for Wales?" (from Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons). [YouTube clip]