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After wrapping up two-and-a-half hours of same-sex marriage arguments at the Supreme Court, two plaintiffs and a number of advocates crossed First Street to head to Capitol Hill.

Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., hosted a packed reception Tuesday afternoon welcoming Michigan residents April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse to the Longworth House Office Building. The women are plaintiffs in the case challenging Michigan’s ban on same-sex marriage, which was one of the four consolidated cases before the Supreme Court.

“This is so overwhelming,” said Rowse, with tears in her eyes as she addressed the roughly 100 people gathered in the House Agriculture Committee room. She described how they started litigation after she and DeBoer became concerned that should something happen to one of them, the other partner may not have custody over their four children. “That was just a thought we could not bear.”

Four years later, they found themselves at the Supreme Court, and later on Capitol Hill, surrounded by lawmakers, staffers and advocates. Democrats including House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland and members of the Michigan delegation stopped by the reception to congratulate the two plaintiffs and express their solidarity.

“They’re my friends,” Dingell said, explaining she first met Rowse, a nurse, when she cared for Dingell’s husband, former Rep. John D. Dingell, D-Mich., when he was in the hospital.

“I know what really wonderful human beings they are,” Dingell continued. “And sometimes cases like this take on these mammoth proportions and people don’t realize the humanness of the two human beings that are involved here, or the fact that all they wanted to do, if anything happened, was stay a family unit.”

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