Quote for Day: Sixth Circuit Ruling Upholding Ban on Same-Sex Marriage "Treats Both the Issues and the Litigants Here As Mere Abstractions"

Quote for the day, Judge Martha Craig Daughtrey dissenting from the ruling of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals today upholding bans on same-sex marriage in Michigan, Ohio, Tennesse, and Kentucky:

The majority opinion "treats both the issues and the litigants here as mere abstractions," Daughtrey wrote. 

"Instead of recognizing the plaintiffs as persons, suffering actual harm as a result of being denied the right to marry where they reside or the right to have their valid marriages recognized there, my colleagues view the plaintiffs as social activists who have somehow stumbled into federal court, inadvisably, when they should be out campaigning to win 'the hearts and minds' of Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee voters to their cause," she wrote. 

"But these plaintiffs are not political zealots trying to push reform on their fellow citizens; they are committed same-sex couples, many of them heading up de facto families, who want to achieve equal status ... with their married neighbors, friends, and coworkers, to be accepted as contributing members of their social and religious communities, and to be welcomed as fully legitimate parents at their children’s schools," she continued. "They seek to do this by virtue of exercising a civil right that most of us take for granted -- the right to marry."

Real people. Real lives. Real hearts broken. Real happiness disrupted. Real hopes crushed. Real human beings made to feel worthless, like human refuse thrown on a dung heap.

How people choose to vote, and for whom they choose to vote, has real-life consequences.

And more's the pity that some of us have to bear the brunt of those consequences more than others do.