One standout from all that’s being said in reaction to Judge Walker ruling Prop 8 unconstitutional on both Equal Protection and Due Process grounds comes from Adam Bink:

Of course, it’s only judicial “arrogance” or “activism” when they don’t like the decision. District of Columbia v. Heller [link], which struck down popularly supported gun control laws, legislated by the duly elected representatives of the people in DC? Not judicial activism at all.

Can someone on the pro prop 8 side answer me that in District TMV?

And how about that judge? Cato’s David Boaz on Walker:

In fact, Judge Walker was first appointed to the federal bench by President Ronald Reagan in 1987, at the recommendation of Attorney General Edwin Meese III (now the Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow in Public Policy and Chairman of the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation). Democratic opposition led by Sen. Alan Cranston (D-CA) prevented the nomination from coming to a vote during Reagan’s term. Walker was renominated by President George H. W. Bush in February 1989. Again the Democratic Senate refused to act on the nomination. Finally Bush renominated Walker in August, and the Senate confirmed him in December.

What was the hold-up? Two issues, basically. Like many accomplished men of the time, he was a member of an all-male club, the Olympic Club. Many so-called liberals said that should disqualify him for the federal bench. People for the American Way, for instance, said in a letter to Judiciary Committee chair Joe Biden, “The time has come to send a clear signal that there is no place on the federal bench for an individual who has, for years maintained membership in a discriminatory club and taken no meaningful steps to change the club’s practices.”

The second issue was that as a lawyer in private practice he had represented the U.S. Olympic Committee in a suit that prevented a Bay Area group from calling its athletic competition the Gay Olympics.

Because of those issues, coalitions including such groups as the NAACP, the National Organization for Women, the Human Rights Campaign, the Lambda Legal Defense Fund, and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force worked to block the nomination.

In other words, this “liberal San Francisco judge” was recommended by Ed Meese, appointed by Ronald Reagan, and opposed by Alan Cranston, Nancy Pelosi, Edward Kennedy, and the leading gay activist groups. It’s a good thing for for advocates of marriage equality that those forces were only able to block Walker twice.

With that in mind I’ll go out on a limb here and disagree with my co-blogger Logan Penza. This is not a temporary victory. It is another important step along the way to equality. I predict a SCOTUS victory a few short years from now. (You will remember, I’ve long argued that the culture is way ahead of the courts on this one.)

The foes of marriage equality have deftly used the courts and the law to hold old norms — norms that are no longer culturally relevant — in place. So, along with that Supreme Court victory will come a broad social acceptance and embrace of committed same-sex couples.

Bink via Andrew Sullivan, Boaz via James Joyner.