"It's not a peripheral issue for them."

That's what former Congressman Patrick Murphy said about Don't Ask, Don't Tell in the talk he just gave while accepting the Brown Democrats' JFK Jr. Award. He talked about how his local newspaper editorialized against his focus on repealing DADT, arguing that it was a "peripheral issue," and about how he had seen people he described as having been better leaders than him kicked out of the military just because they had "a boyfriend or a girlfriend back home." And for those people, it wasn't a peripheral issue, it was their life. This is one really important thing about civil rights issues: for the people they affect, they tend to be life-destroyers. And for me, a life-destroyer is a pretty big deal. One person whose life you ruin is one person too many; it's incredibly hard to find that balance on the other side of the ledger. Ending someone's career because of who they happen to fall in love with just plain inflicts more suffering on that person than taking an extra three percent of a rich person's income in taxes ever could. It's not a peripheral issue for them.

Side note: he also referred to Osama bin Laden as having "murdered" thousands of Americans. I think that's a really interesting way to talk about it, given that the Administration around 9/11 made the very conscious decision not to talk about it as an act of crime but rather as an act of war. Just sayin'.