Gay Judge’s Ethics Questioned In Ohio

An Ohioan Democrat doesn’t seem to understand that justice is blind. Judge James D. Piergies questions whether his queer colleague Mary Wiseman’s lesbianism will tip the scales.

Montgomery County Common Pleas Judge Mary Wiseman, who is openly gay, should excuse herself from cases involving the state constitutional ban on gay marriage and Dayton’s new law banning discrimination against gays, her Democratic primary opponent says.

Montgomery County Area Court Judge James D. Piergies cited Wiseman’s role in writing an earlier, failed version of the anti-discrimination law when she was a Dayton city commissioner in 1999. He said it would create an ethical problem as well if she were to consider cases involving the Ohio constitutional amendment that passed in 2004.

Wiseman shrugged of Piergies’ suspicions, saying that if personal characteristics influenced one’s decision, then Thurgood Marshall should never have presided over civil rights cases.