The now-retired federal judge who struck down California's ban on same-sex marriage shared his reflections with reporters for the first time Wednesday, saying that the trial should have been televised and that he never considered stepping aside because he is gay. 
 
 "If you thought a judge's sexuality, ethnicity, national origin (or) gender would prevent the judge from handling a case, that's a very slippery slope," former Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker told reporters in a conference room at the San Francisco courthouse where he served for 21 years. 
 
 "I don't think it's relevant," he said. 
 
 Independent thinker 
 
 Walker, 67, who retired from the bench at the end of February, also said he thinks his ruling was correct and he hopes higher courts review the case on its merits. 
 
 He discussed the case in his first meeting with reporters since he announced his retirement in September. 
 
 A former corporate lawyer who was appointed to the bench by President George H.W. Bush, Walker proved to be an independent thinker - a libertarian who advocated decriminalization of drugs and issued groundbreaking rulings limiting government power and expanding individual rights. 
 
 His most prominent ruling was his August decision overturning Proposition 8, the November 2008 initiative that amended the state Constitution to outlaw same-sex marriage. 
 
 Same-sex-marriage ruling 
 
 After a 12-day trial that included testimony by gay and lesbian couples and experts on the history and purpose of marriage, Walker ruled that Prop. 8 discriminated on the basis of sexual orientation and gender and did not benefit heterosexual spouses or the marital institution. 
 
 The measure's sponsors have asked a federal appeals court to overturn the ruling, but the court has questioned whether the sponsors have legal standing - the right to represent the state's interests - after then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown declined to appeal. 
 
 Walker first raised that issue in August, citing a U.S. Supreme Court decision that expressed doubt about whether sponsors of an initiative can stand in for state officials. But he said Wednesday he'd prefer to see the appeals court decide whether Prop. 8 is unconstitutional. 
 
 If Prop. 8 is invalidated because no one has the standing to defend it, he said, it will leave "a sense of the issue not having been resolved." 
 
 The Chronicle first disclosed Walker's sexual orientation during the trial, a fact he had neither discussed publicly nor tried to conceal. He said Wednesday he'd been surprised that it hadn't surfaced earlier and had surmised that "every journalist had decided it was not news." 
 
 The disclosure prompted some opponents of same-sex marriage to accuse Walker of bias and demand that he disqualify himself. Walker noted Wednesday that no parties in the case, including Prop. 8's sponsors, ever made such a request, and said, "I never thought it was appropriate to recuse from that case." 
 
 Television coverage 
 
 Walker also tried to have the trial televised as part of a pilot project approved by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, but the Supreme Court intervened at the request of the measure's sponsors, who said their witnesses might back out for fear of retribution if they knew a large audience would be watching. 
 
 The high court said Walker had failed to give enough advance public notice and also questioned whether such a high-profile case should be telecast. But Walker said Wednesday that trials of great public interest - Prop. 8, or the current Barry Bonds perjury trial - are the ones that should be most visible outside the courtroom. 
 
 "We are supposed to have public trials in this country," he said, and the only way that can happen now is "to admit the public by their eyes and ears." 
 
 Walker said the Supreme Court may have been motivated by its unwillingness to televise its own proceedings - a stance he called "very hard to understand." Camera coverage would expose Americans to a range of arguments and the high quality of lawyers and the court system, he said. 
 
 Walker is returning to private law practice as head of a San Francisco firm that will specialize in mediation, arbitration and other alternatives to litigating complex civil cases. Those were his most satisfying cases as a judge, he said. 
 
 He was also the judge who ruled the George W. Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping of suspected terrorists illegal and rejected Apple Computer's claim that Microsoft Corp. had illicitly copied Apple Macintosh features in the Windows operating system. 
 
 But Walker said his favorite trial was the 2000 case in which he approved Hearst Corp.'s purchase of The Chronicle. It had everything, he said - local color, meaty antitrust issues, surprising testimony, and political and journalistic intrigue. 
 
 "If every trial were like that, I'd stay forever," he said. 
 
 This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle ||||| A federal judge on Tuesday refused to invalidate last year's ruling against Proposition 8, deciding the gay jurist who overturned the same-sex marriage ban had no obligation to step aside because of a possible conflict of interest. 
 
 The decision by Chief Judge James Ware of the U.S. District Court in San Francisco left the ruling by retired Judge Vaughn R. Walker in place. Walker’s decision remains on hold pending a separate appeal to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. 
 
 
 
 Proponents of Proposition 8 argued that Walker's conflict was not his sexual orientation, but the fact that he was in a serious same-sex relationship that could conceivably lead to marriage. 
 
 Walker, a Republican appointee, has never said publicly whether he wished to marry his partner. But he told reporters that he never considered his sexual orientation grounds for declining to preside over the Proposition 8 challenge. 
 
 "It is not reasonable to presume that a judge is incapable of making an impartial decision about the constitutionality of a law, solely because, as a citizen, the judge could be affected by the proceedings," Ware wrote in his ruling. 
 
 Photos: Reaction to court's decision to uphold ban in 2009 
 
 The chief judge said all Californians share an interest in having the the Constitution enforced. The "single interest" Walker shared with the same-sex couples who challenged Proposition 8 "gave him no greater interest in a proper decision on the merits that would exist for any other judge or citizen," Ware wrote. 
 
 [Updated, 2 p.m.: Ware said it was unreasonable to assume from Walker's relationship that he had such a great interest in marrying that he was incapable of performing his judicial duties. 
 
 "The mere fact that a judge is in a relationship with another person -- whether of the same sex or the opposite sex -- does not ipso facto imply that the judge must be so interested in marrying that person that he would be unable to exhibit the impartiality which, it is presumed, all federal judges maintain." 
 
 To assume Walker had a conflict of interest would be speculation based on "unsubstantiated suspicion that the judge is personally biased or prejudiced," Ware continued. 
 
 The chief judge also said that Walker's failure to disclose his same-sex relationship prior to his ruling could mean that he had considered the situation and decided that no reasonable observer would conclude that his impartiality was questionable. 
 
 "Silence is by its very nature ambiguous and thus is open to multiple interpretation," Ware wrote. 
 
 If Walker had disclosed "intimate but irrelevant details of his personal life," he could have "set a pernicious precedent" for other judges by promoting disclosure of highly personal information, Ware said. 
 
 Chad Griffin, who formed a civil rights group that launched the federal case, said Ware's ruling "erased all doubt that the Prop. 8 trial was anything but fair and thorough and sent a powerful message that extreme fringe groups cannot strong-arm the law." 
 
 Peter Renn, attorney with Lambda Legal, a gay rights legal advocacy group, said Ware's ruling "decisively rejected an outrageous attack on the integrity of Judge Walker, not to mention judges in general." 
 
 "Prop. 8 was declared unconstitutional because it is unconstitutional -- not because the judge is gay," Renn said. 
 
 A spokesperson for ProtectMarriage could not immediately be reached.] 
 
 Charles Cooper, the lead attorney for ProtectMarriage, said the group would appeal Ware's motion and "continue our tireless efforts to defend the will of the people of California to preserve marriage as the union of a man and a woman." 
 
 Tuesday's ruling followed a three-hour hearing Monday in San Francisco in which backers of Proposition 8 argued that Walker had a personal stake in the outcome of the marriage debate while opponents of the ban countered that the challenge was a veiled attack on Walker's sexual orientation. 
 
 No court has ever upheld the removal of a judge from a civil rights case because of his or her race, religion or gender, according to lawyers in the case. 
 
 RELATED: 
 
 Interactive: Gay marriage rights in the U.S. 
 
 Lopez: Prop. 8 backers once again grasping at straws 
 
 Bankruptcy Court declares Defense of Marriage Act invalid 
 
 -- Maura Dolan in San Francisco 
 
 Photo: Judge Vaughn R. Walker, now retired, speaks at a news conference in April. Credit: Beff Diefenbach / Reuters ||||| g'day m8 
 
 Acknowledging his sexuality for the first time in public, Vaughn Walker, who left the U.S. District Court bench in February, and who declared Prop 8 unconstitutional and is now seeing his court ruling bandied about on appeal, told reporters today that not only is he a big ‘mo, but he’s also been in a relationship with his partner for 10 years. As for the argument that gay judges can somehow not rule on cases involving sexuality, Walker takes the same position Queerty always has: immutable characteristics like sexuality, race, and gender are not judicial conflicts of interest. Taking those traits into consideration when a judge decides whether to recuse himself from a case, says Walker, is “a very slippery slope.” The Los Angeles Times, stupidly, would disagree.
– The judge who overturned California's ban on gay marriage acknowledged in an interview for the first time that he's homosexual and that he never considered recusing himself from the case. "If you thought a judge's sexuality, ethnicity, national origin (or) gender would prevent the judge from handling a case, that's a very slippery slope," retired federal Judge Vaughn Walker tells the San Francisco Chronicle. "I don't think it's relevant." The Chronicle actually reported on Walker's sexual orientation during the Prop 8 trial, prompting critics, like this one, to stay he should have stepped down because he had a conflict of interest. ("He and his partner are now permitted to marry!") Nope, says the gay blog Queerty after the Walker interview. "Immutable characteristics like sexuality, race, and gender are not judicial conflicts of interest."