Family court judge says gay relationships are 'just entertainment'
A family court judge in Lexington, Kentucky, told a religious group earlier this month he loves gays, but their relationships are “sterile” and “just entertainment.”
Judge Tim Philpot criticized the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision finding a right to gay marriage as “pretty close to insane” and said gay marriage is an oxymoron like “jumbo shrimp,” the Louisville Courier-Journal reports. His Sept. 8 speech to the Francis Asbury Society was posted online.
“Now kids not only have to decide which girl to date, or which boy to date, they’ve got to decide which gender to date,” he said.
Philpot routinely presides over gay adoptions. The Courier-Journal spoke with several lawyers who have represented gay clients before Philpot who said his views do not affect his decision-making.
Philpot made the same point in an email to the Courier-Journal. “My views on the deep spiritual nature of marriage have never stopped me from following the law and being fair to all people, including those who identify themselves as LGBT,” he said.
Philpot told the newspaper he is speaking about marriage to promote his new novel Judge Z: Irretrievably Broken, which is intended to discuss the importance of straight marriage. “As I say in the book more than once, the greatest tragedy is not that gay people want to get married—it is that straight people don’t want to get married,” he said.
In a June story, the Lexington Herald Leader called Philpot’s book “an engaging, well-written story about a judge who orders a controversial hearing to slow down the divorce of a couple with young children in the hope they will reconcile.” The Herald Leader reports that Philpot “has generated some controversy by bringing a little of that process into his own courtroom.”
In divorce cases involving children, the June article reported, Philpot asks couples to attend counseling sessions if he believes they have a chance to reconcile. “I’m not trying to stop divorces,” he told one couple appearing before him. “But I’m trying to put a speed bump in the path of what is usually a speeding freight train.”
