I think we did a lot of good in Maine. I really do. But I'm left wondering how long it will take to change enough hearts and minds that we win one of these ballot initiatives? I talked to dozens and dozens of voters over GOTV weekend and the Yes on 1 folks are not bad people. They really believe that it's not about gay rights. Many of them are for making civil unions/domestic partnerships equal to marriage--even at the federal level. And they really believe that they are called by their god to protect traditional marriage. They aren't trying to be bigoted.

But they are.

And that's the bottom line. In order for you to feel comfortable making distinctions between classes of people, you must first assume that these groups are different--in a legal sense.

For example, anyone would agree that a mother, father and child recently immigrated from Honduras is somewhat different than a family of hundreds in Massachusetts who all descend from people who came over on the Mayflower. They have been here for different lengths of time. They may speak different languages and may have different cultural behaviors. They probably look different.

But are they different under the law? Should we afford certain rights to the immigrants, but withhold other rights from the Mayflower descendants?

Of course, there is some difference between a same-sex marriage and a different-sex marriage. But should those differences matter under the law?

Supporters of Marriage Equality generally believe that those differences don't really matter at all. Certainly not under the law.

Unfortunately, we couldn't get enough people in Maine to see it that way. Someday we will wonder what all the fuss was about.