the ACTIVIST JUDGES strike again!

george bush is all up on his high horse and shit, talking trash about "activist judges" and the massachusetts supreme court's recent "deeply troubling" (read: totally awesome) decision on gay marriage.

let me say, first, that i really cannot understand the desire, on anyone's part, for marriage to be an exclusive right of heterosexuals. i just can't. it's obviously related to my inability to believe that God is upset by love between certain people. i think a fair reading of the bible (i focus there only because that seems to be where dubya and his minions are focused, too) informs us that God is looking, first and foremost, for an increase of love. makes sense, being as that's what God is. and, as has been often pointed out, christians who are concerned about particular expressions of love had better not be wearing any cotton-blend fabrics.

[snark: having witnessed fred phelps's people, i can tell you that petrochemical-heavy cotton-poly blends are where they're at. i know the OT doesn't mention poly, but still. hypocrites.]

anyway, i don't understand the furor over gay marriage. or rather i do, but can't countenance it. it's not worth trying to analyze the issue here. i will say that the idea of a constitutional amendment formally enshrining this (any?) sort of discrimination is an unthinkably awful idea. it would be approximately as useful as prohibition, just without the roaring-twenties sense that we're all in it together. ugh.

what i'm more interested in at the moment is bush's indiscriminate (and clearly uncomprehending) use of the term "activist judges." he always says it (as in the state of the union) with his most pensive frowny-face, knowing that this time-tested conservative chestnut will win the day. the problem is that it often *does* win the day, because it smacks of...something. elitism, i suppose.

but that has always been the judiciary's job -- to give democracy a good slap once in a while, forcing it to rethink its priorities. given his logic, not to mention his politics, bush is probably no fan of _brown_, either. dessegregation, of education or marriage, is always a tough one.

here's a strategy question: is there a lefty rhetorical foil for the overtone (undertone?)-laden "activist judges"?