Activist Judgery

A judicial activist has now ruled New York's prohibition on gay marriage unconstitutional.  This is old news in Washington state, where two separate superior court judges have determined exactly the same thing.  That it's New York in this case is much more significant due to its higher population and its 35 electoral college votes.  I love how neo-conservatives paint judges doing their jobs as "activist" when they come out with a ruling with which they disagree.  These are the same "activist" judges who gave George W. Bush the presidency in 2000 when there was a perfectly good remedy already in place in the Constitution.  However, let bygones be bygones.  What worries me about the New York case and the Washington cases is that they play into the hands of the radical right wing.  I fear the backlash--a little of which we experienced in the 2004 election wherein 11 states banned gay marriage at the state constitutional level.  Such legislation is discriminatory and mean spirited.  The proponents of those actions have said, in effect, "we hate you and we hate what you do, and although we can't put you in jail for it as we'd like, we're going to make sure that your relationships are never, ever given the respect they deserve.  So there."

It's infantile. 

But there's going to be more of it before it's over.

In a totally different story, a California student died of water intoxication after drinking from a 5 gallon jug during a fraternity hazing.  They need to put every single one of those students in jail (not forever, but long enough to teach them a good lesson), and they need to disenfranchise the frat from every state school campus in California.