As expected, ProtectMarriage.com has filed an emergency stay of Judge Vaughn Walker’s ruling in the Prop 8 trial with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The stay that Walker put on his ruling will expire on August 18 absent any action from the Ninth Circuit. Walker, who denied the stay motion to ProtectMarriage.com yesterday, doubted that the intervenors even had standing to appeal his ruling, even while they were allowed to argue the case in court.

Judge Walker has made his decision on the motion to stay his judgment in the Proposition 8 case.

So, the stay has been denied. But that judgment has been stayed, basically, for another week. At that point, Prop 8 is toast. But this gives the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals the ability to stay Judge Walker’s ruling within the next week. So that’s the next phase.

US District Court Judge Vaughn Walker will issue a ruling today on whether same-sex couples can immediately marry in California, or whether they will have to wait for the outcome of an appeal to his ruling overturning Proposition 8.

The right-wing is in overdrive attacking Judge Vaughn Walker’s bias, since they say he is ‘openly gay.’ Of course, Walker isn’t openly gay by any stretch of the imagination. But Michaelangelo Signorile perpetuates a dangerous stereotype, difficult to shed for men of my generation and Vaughn Walker’s, by calling these lies ‘smears’ in his otherwise excellent HuffPost article today. It’s not a smear to call someone openly gay, since there’s nothing wrong with being gay in the first place.

And if your religion can’t stop Satan or the Devil or El Diablo or whatever magical evil force you’ve conjured to frighten the rubes — well, neither can Mr Law. Listen up, unenlightened ones: YOUR FEARS ARE NOT ENOUGH.

Roman Catholic Cardinal Roger Mahony, the soon-to-be-retired Archbishop of Los Angeles, is of the opinion that Judge Vaughn Walker was wrong in his ruling on Prop 8, because he failed to make his decision based upon religious beliefs that bless only male-female relationships.

Mahony ends up proving Walker’s point, that the only basis for the kind of discrimination that Prop 8 sought to enshrine in law grows out of certain religious and moral positions.

Cardinal, you may be free to discriminate against gays and lesbians within the Catholic church as a matter of faith, but the state of California is not free to do the same as a matter of law.

Judge Walker set an accelerated schedule for consideration of DI’s Motion For Stay in California’s Proposition 8 ban on marriage decision. The real defendant, the State of California, has already filed opposition to the stay, through the Attorney General, the Governor and the City of San Francisco.

There was a fair amount of attention to Vaughn Walker’s scathing dismissal of professional anti-gay “scholar” David Blankenhorn’s testimony in the Prop 8 trial. But I’ve seen little commentary on the fate to which Walker consigned Dr. William Tam’s deposition, even though Tam’s deposition provided an equally important part of Walker’s ruling.

Sure, it’s a big deal that Judge Walker struck down Prop 8, but it’s sucked up so much blog and media attention that I think we’re missing the dire unintended consequences of another, very similar ruling.