Things that make me go hmm… Proposition 8 and jury duty

I woke up this morning thinking about Proposition 8 and jury duty. The people in California were asked to make a judgment on the definition of marriage and they did. Judge Walker has determined as his principle fact that “Proposition 8 enacts, without reason, a private moral view that same-sex couples are inferior to opposite-sex couples”.

If there are so many people in California displaying this irrational behavior, how does Judge Walker plan to select a jury? It is without reason to assume that jurors’ will not involve their private moral views in their deliberations of serious crimes. Having served on juries in the past I can say that private moral views play important part in the decision making and the jury selection. In one jury selection process I was asked by the prosecutors if I had a “moral” problem with handing out a death sentence. In the Proposition 8 case Judge Walker has chosen to denigrate a vary large group people who exercised their civic duty in good faith. There is no middle ground on his disdain for this group of prospective jurors. It is truly ironic that shortly he will be calling on this group of irrational citizens to fill his juries. I suspect that these Californians are now wondering if they are incapable of making the “correct” decision on something as simple as the definition of marriage, how can anyone presume they can make a decision on the crimes of murder or theft?