I wasn’t the only one who thought this was foregone conclusion. Gary Glenn, president of the American Family Association of Michigan, came to the same conclusion using a slightly different set of reasons.

“The fact that an openly homosexual judge would vote to overturn the vote of 7 million Californians in favor of constitutionally defining marriage as between one man and one woman is anything but surprising,” Glenn said. “It will be appealed to the United States Supreme Court, which will be the only decision that counts.”

Glenn is saying things with that statement. Right off the bat, he brings up Walker’s sexual orientation as something that would potentially bias the judge’s ruling in the case. He insinuates that because Walker is a homosexual, he obviously would rule the amendment unconstitutional. I actually searched the Internet to find out if Walker was in fact gay. Here’s the answer I came up with: It doesn’t matter. He’s a judge and it is his job to be impartial. Matters involving minority groups can, in fact, be judged impartially by minorities. The majority does not have a monopoly on impartiality. That is to say, privilege does not imply benevolence.

In a rather famous instance, former federal district judge Constance Baker Motley refused to recuse herself from a civil rights case involving women because, “if background or sex or race of each judge were, by definition, sufficient grounds for removal, no judge on this court could hear this case, or many others, by virtue of the fact that all of them were attorneys, of a sex, often with distinguished law firm or public service backgrounds.”

The other thing Glenn invokes is that somehow there was something correct about what “7 million Californians” chose to do. Olson, on “Fox News Sunday,” pointed out that it doesn’t matter how many people voted for it if it infringes on the constitutional rights of another group. His point has two parts. The first is this: Citizens should not be empowered to take away the rights of others. The second part of his point addresses the judicial system’s role in that equation by asserting, “It is not judicial activism, it is judicial responsibility in its most classic sense.”
This is one of the things we learn as children. The maxim “two wrongs don’t make a right” is the simplest way to put it. Somehow, it has escaped people like Glenn that a practice does not become unoppressive if enough people join in. In fact, the opposite is true.

But even with these two points thoroughly covered by history and precedent, there still is the chance — Glenn alludes to this as well — that the U.S. Supreme Court will reverse Walker’s ruling. Part of the reason that scenario is possible comes from the notion that the Court does not want to be too far ahead of public opinion. In other words, the Court will reverse the ruling because the public is not yet at the point where gay marriage is widely accepted.

Individual rights are not given and removed based on the whims of the majority. It isn’t the fault of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community that our society has taken to perceiving them as the “other” or, in this case, as “less than.” They shouldn’t be penalized until the rest of us come around.

Comedian Chris Rock sums up the struggle for civil rights by saying, “My father didn’t suddenly deserve to eat with people because he earned it, the people (who) were denying him his rights got less crazy.”

David Barker is the State News opinion editor. Reach him at barkerd@msu.edu.