Judicial Activism, Gay Marriage

Some people may try to convince you that the proposed constitutional amendment to ban civil unions and same-sex marriage is an attempt to protect us from “activist judges''? But what does that mean?
Judicial activism traditionally referred to Judges who ignored both precedent and the constitution and made a ruling that they thought best for everyone. What the term now refers to is a judge who makes a ruling that whoever is shouting loudest (in this case conservatives) disagrees with. But in most cases judges are not guilty of “activism''? they are simply exercising their oversight prerogative and doing their sworn duty which is to uphold the constitution.
Who are these “activist judges''? anyway? Could they be the supreme courts of Georgia and Tennessee that rejected challenges to broaden the scope of marriage to include homosexuals? Or the Supreme Courts of New York and Washington who just recently did the same. Maybe the “activist judges''? wear robes in liberal Connecticut where the Supreme Court just voted to uphold a statute that prohibited homosexuals from marrying. Or the “activist judges''? in Massachusetts, who are the center of all the controversy, who just recently approved a ballot initiative that would put the issue in front of the Massachusetts voters, the same issue that will be on the ballot in many states across the nation this fall, including my home state Wisconsin.
This proposed amendment is not an attempt to stop judicial activism. It is an attempt of one group of people to make the actions of another illegal simply because the majority disproves of what the minority is doing. It is an attempt to publicly and permanently invalidate thousands of relationships in the state because some people find the lives of homosexuals to be unnatural.
Had conservatives in the 20’s and 30’s adopted the same strategy of amending the constitution so that “liberal activist''? judges could not overturn the laws they passed the courts never would have put an end to segregation (Brown v. Board of Education) or anti-miscegenation laws (Loving v. Virginia). It is wrong to attack the judiciary just because a few make decisions that you may not like. And to scream “activism''? just degrades civilized discourse and ruins honest debate. If it were not for “judicial activism''? many of the rights and freedoms that we all take for granted would not be there.
After all judges do not have the final say in our political system because we live in a democracy; a democracy that cherishes its vast freedoms. Because our laws reflect the will of the majority only the people who are in vast minorities are at risk for having their freedoms trampled on by the majority. In this case it is the 90% of Americans who are heterosexual who run the risk of trampling on the 10% who are not. We must all ask ourselves this: who among the ninety is willing to stand up for the ten in the face of adversity and say “These people have value, and we should treat them that way.''?
To pretend this is a stance against “judicial activism''? is dishonest and ridiculous.