Wiseman fit to judge?

Flicking through the Dayton Daily News is not my usual habit, but this story certainly did catch my eye.

Judge James D. Piergies has said that fellow Judge Mary Wiseman, Ohio's first openly gay judge, "should excuse herself from cases involving the state constitutional ban on gay marriage and Dayton's new law banning discrimination against gays".

He first claimed that this was because she was gay, later he changed this to the fact that she agreed with the law opposing homophobia, and therefore was not fit to rule on these cases. Piergies later went on to say that a black judge who had been a campaigner for civil rights should not have presided over cases of racial discrimination. The News asked Piergies to elaborate but he "said he hadn't really given the issue a lot of thought."

You do not say.