The Ninth US District Court of Appeals is currently hearing arguments by Proposition 8 proponents in California. They claim that retired US District Judge Vaughn Walker, who helped strike down California’s Proposition 8, should have recused himself since he is a homosexual.

ThinkProgress reports that “Proponents of the measure [seek] to convince the rather skeptical three-judge panel that Walker was ‘in the same kind of relationship as the plaintiffs’ and was unfit to rule on the question of whether gays and lesbians should be allowed to marry because he himself may one day wish to wed his partner.”

Apparently, the three judges hearing the case are not buying the argument. One judge, R. Randy Smith, asked Charles Cooper, counsel for the proponents of Prop 8, whether or not “a married judge could ever be allowed to hear a case about divorce?”

Political analyst Ian Millhiser had this to say about the argument being used by the legal counsel in favor of Prop 8:

“if a court were to accept the anti-gay group’s arguments, it would also follow that no judge who is presently in a committed opposite-sex relationship would be allowed to hear this case either. The name of the organization defending Prop 8 is ‘Protect Marriage,’ a name that derives from their bizarre belief that same-sex marriages are destructive to opposite-sex marriages. But if this were true, than straight judges would have a personal stake in ensuring that their own marriages are not undermined by a decision striking down Prop 8 — and thus would also be required to recuse.”

This would mean than only single judges who had no interest in marriage whatsoever would be allowed to hear this case. Obviously, this line of thinking is absurd and hopefully shows that these judges will hand down a decision in favor of Judge Walker’s previous ruling.