When the courts do not let the people resolve new social issues like this one, they perpetuate the idea that the heroes in these change events are judges and lawyers. Better in this instance, we think, to allow change through the customary political processes, in which the people, gay and straight alike, become the heroes of their own stories by meeting each other not as adversaries in a court system but as
fellow citizens seeking to resolve a new social issue in a fair-minded way.
Source: http://www.ca6.uscourts.gov/...
If the standard is set that the majority gets to vote on the rights of minority groups, what's next?
How long until someone tries to amend a state constitution to ban Muslims from opening mosques, or atheists from raising children? There are places where such things might actually pass. Under the logic used by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, that would be just peachy. Never mind that we'd completely stop being America at that point.
According to the Washington Post (along with numerous other sources), this decision "makes it almost certain the Supreme Court must take up the issue of whether gay couples have a constitutional right to marry."
Senior Judge Margaret Craig Daughtrey said in a sharply worded dissent that Sutton’s opinion “would make an engrossing TED Talk or, possibly, an introductory lecture in Political Philosophy.” But she said federal judges are required to protect the constitutional rights of the minority.
“If we in the judiciary do not have the authority, and indeed the responsibility, to right fundamental wrongs left excused by a majority of the electorate, our whole intricate, constitutional system of checks and balances, as well as the oaths to which we swore, prove to be nothing but shams,” wrote Daughtrey, who was chosen for the bench by President Bill Clinton.
We'll probably find out next year whether the U.S. Supreme court sides with the logic of Judge Daughtrey, or the paranoid, "watch out, God is gonna get us" style of bigotry and fear that leads voters to limit the rights of people they are afraid of.