Great News About Wisconsin Civil Rights Lawsuit Seeking Marriage Equality

About a third of the states have legalized same-sex marriages, so it is not surprising that a civil rights lawsuit to achieve the same result in Wisconsin has been filed in US District Court in Madison.

Props to the individual plaintiffs, and their attorneys, the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Wisconsin.

Defenders of traditional marriage-only will claim that Wisconsin's prohibitions are legitimized by their inclusion in the Wisconsin Constitution following a successful statewide referendum along with approvals in two Legislative sessions.

But it was a mistake in the first place to put people's rights and equal access to legal, social and financial benefits to a vote by legislators and then to voters on a particular date in a given election cycle.

Democracy, due process and equal legal protections should not be that whimsical, or put on ballots to help bring out a big turnout of one constituency or another.

What other rights - - whom else's rights - - do we want to let a majority of voters approve, or deny to others?

Yours, for example?

I didn't think so.

Government's role should be to extend and protect people's rights, not to embed discrimination into law and constitutional documents.

No one's traditional marriage is threatened or harmed by a same-sex marriage down the block or across the state.

It's 2014, and time for Wisconsin to  recognize the full citizenship of gay Wisconsin human beings.