I don’t get it.

„Becau­se the uni­on of a man and woman deser­ves an hono­red place in our socie­ty, I sup­port the pro­tec­tion of mar­ria­ge against acti­vist jud­ges.“ (taken from In Accep­tance Speech)

I may be misun­derstan­ding the US legal sys­tem, but are­n’t jud­ges, by vir­tue of their pro­fes­si­on, pas­si­ve in the sen­se that they only rule on cases that are brought befo­re them via a fair­ly strict pro­cess? In the sen­se that case has to be made, some­bo­dy has to bring it befo­re them – invol­ving lawy­ers and other per­son­nel? So how then, can they be ‚acti­vist?‘ And is it not their job to deci­de sole­ly based on the then-cur­rent law? So then, can they not only allow same-sex mar­ria­ges if the­re is a law that allows for it? 

I admit that I don’t even under­stand the under­ly­ing preoc­cu­pa­ti­on with homo­se­xua­li­ty. Frank­ly, I don’t under­stand why hete­ro­se­xu­al cou­ples should have more rights than homo­se­xu­al ones, and I don’t under­stand how second-class rela­ti­onships can go tog­e­ther with „All men are crea­ted equal.“ But then, I’m open­ly liberal.

But this kind of rhe­to­ric real­ly knocks my socks off.