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Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin

(107,085 posts)
Mon May 8, 2017, 03:02 PM May 2017

Same-sex marriage is the law of the land. A Kentucky judge must have missed that.

W. MITCHELL NANCE, a family court judge in Kentucky, has enfolded himself in a cocoon of principled self-righteousness by declaring that, “as a matter of conscience,” he will refuse to hear any adoption cases initiated by gay or lesbian parents. The judge is entitled to his opinions. However, having declared his unwillingness to enforce the law and his open prejudice against an entire class of Americans — including litigants who may bring other cases before him — he is not entitled to remain on the bench.

The law of the land is clear. The Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that same-sex marriage must be permitted in all states. Kentucky, like every one of the 50 states, allows adoption by gay couples. What Mr.?Nance regards as “a matter of conscience,” then, is in fact in direct defiance of settled law. If a judge cannot accept the law, and in fact is, by his own account, incapable of impartial and fair adjudication of that law, he is, as “a matter of conscience,” duty-bound to seek a new line of work.

There are widely accepted criteria by which judges can and must recuse themselves; the conviction that the law itself is illegitimate is not one of them.

A judge should recuse himself if he or an immediate family member has a personal interest in a case, by dint of financial, personal or family relationship. He should recuse himself if he is plainly biased against one or the other party in a case that comes before him in a proceeding. Bias against a whole slice of the population is a different, and disqualifying, matter, and renders Mr. Nance unfit to serve.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/same-sex-marriage-is-the-law-of-the-land-a-kentucky-judge-must-have-missed-that/2017/05/07/1a7defd4-303a-11e7-9dec-764dc781686f_story.html?utm_term=.8950c24f1f47&wpisrc=nl_rainbow&wpmm=1

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