Any day now, the judge in the Proposition 8 trail is expected to hand down his decision. No one doubts what that decision will be. He tipped his hand abundantly during the whole trial. Without doubt, he will overturn the decision made by millions of Californians that marriage can only be between one man and one woman.

Four tenured professors were supposed to provide expert social science data that shows children have the greatest chance of success in life when they are reared in a life-long marriage between man and woman. These four chickened out when it became clear that plaintiff’s counsel and the judge planned a show trial that would put contrary witnesses in danger.

What we saw during the Prop 8 campaign and the subsequent trial are the bullyboy even fascistic tactics of some among the polymorphously perverse (before you write in, I know most American homosexuals would probably deplore such violent tactics – and I look forward to hearing them say so publicly). What is happening on street corners and in courtrooms over the marriage debate is reminiscent of the homosexual takeover of the American Psychiatric Association and the coerced change in their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders. The manual used to consider homosexuality a neurosis that could be treated. Over a few dramatic years in the 1970s, homosexual activists invaded the annual meeting of the association and verbally abused and physically coerced and threatened association members. Within a few years the diagnostic manual was changed. Homosexuality was now normal.

Opponents of same-sex marriage in California were treated to the same brown-shirt tactics. They got bricks tossed through their car windows, their homes were attacked, and they lost jobs. A frightening YouTube video shows a mob of drunken homosexuals spitting on, taunting, and physically threatening a group of Christians who had the temerity to sing hymns on the wrong block in San Francisco. It is within this context that the Prop 8 trial convened.

Former Attorney General Edwin Meese, writing in the New York Times last January, first raised alarms about Judge Vaughn Walker’s bias. Meese pointed out a series of pre-trial motions "that have the effect of putting the sponsors of Proposition 8, and the people who voted for it, on trial." Walker was less interested in legislative history and social science data than he was in "TV advertisements, press releases, and campaign workers’ statements." He also gave plaintiff’s attorneys the right to discover "internal communications about (PR and advertising) messages that were considered for public use but never used." He ordered the defense to turn over all email messages related to campaign strategy. Why? In order to help make the plaintiff’s case that the motivating factor in the Prop 8 campaign was nothing more than animus against homosexuals.

Perhaps the worst thing Walker did was his attempt to get the whole show trial broadcast on television. He wanted the whole world and certainly the thugs of the sexual left to see and hear the troglodytes who oppose same-sex marriage. Given that even small donors to the Prop 8 campaign were identified on websites along with their home addresses and places of employment, it is reasonable to assume that pictures of witnesses would soon pop up on those same sites. Walker’s decision was stayed and rebuked by the U. S. Supreme Court.

It was rumored at the time that Walker is a homosexual. It has subsequently been revealed in the Los Angeles Times that Walker "attends bar functions with a companion physician." Edward Whelan, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, who has done remarkable work in exposing these shenanigans on the Bench Memos blog at National Review Online, writes "The apparent implication is that Walker has a regular male partner and may be in a long-term relationship." Whelan says if this is so, then Walker had a statutory obligation to recuse himself from the case since he might have a vested interest in overturning Prop 8 (which might prevent him from marrying his male lover).

No matter what Judge Walker decides, this case is going all the way to the Supreme Court. But in the meantime there are other court challenges. Sadly, defenders of marriage have great difficulty finding credentialed social scientists willing to testify. One activist told me, "It doesn’t matter what the social science says if we can’t find a single normally credentialed social scientist to stand by it."

It is hard to blame tenured professors who rightly fear getting death threats or young untenured professors who see their future livelihoods threatened. Still, much depends on a few brave men and women to decide that the thuggish tactics will advance no further.

What we face is the gravest threat to the foundational institution of human society, the family. Never, not once in human history, has there been such a threat as we now face from homosexual activists. Certainly, with easy divorce, contraception, and much else, heterosexuals have already diminished the institution of marriage, but even they have never tried to redefine it out of existence.

Somewhere someone who has the credentials to testify must decide that some things are more important than tenure, more important than advancement, more important than peace and quiet. Now is the time to stand up and say no: not one inch more.

Austin Ruse is the President of the New York and Washinton, D.C.-based Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute (C-FAM), a research institute that focuses exclusively on international social policy. The opinions expressed here are Mr. Ruse’s alone and do not necessarily reflect the policies or positions of C-FAM.