When California voters passed Proposition 8, it was a stunning victory for supporters of traditional marriage.
California is a blue state. And although California is home to a strong conservative minority, Proposition 8 even managed to pass in notoriously liberal Los Angeles county. Increased minority turnout -- usually considered a boon for liberals -- pushed the proposition over the top.
To cope with the loss, the gay-rights movement invented a convenient fiction: it was all those darn Mormons! Yes, the insidious Mormon church, with its infinite supply of money, had hoodwinked the good people of California. Because we all know that Mormon coercion is the only possible reason for opposing something as awesome as gay marriage.
In retrospect, there was nothing surprising about the victory. Every time the issue of gay marriage has been brought to a direct vote, Americans across the country have soundly rejected it.
And last Tuesday, Maine joined the ranks of states that have defeated gay marriage at the ballot box.
Earlier this year, members of the Maine State Legislature legalized gay marriage. They probably assumed they were doing what the people wanted. A reasonable assumption, given Maine's demographics.
Like California, Maine is a blue state. Although Maine's senators are Republicans, both are moderate-to-liberal on the issues. And Maine isn't exactly a part of the Bible Belt. A recent Gallup survey on religious identity ranked Maine as the 3rd least religious state in the country, just beneath New Hampshire and Vermont.
Blaming Mormon cash probably won't fly this time. Protect Maine Equality, the campaign supporting Maine's gay marriage law, raised $4 million, compared with only $2.5 raised by Stand for Marriage Maine, which aimed to overturn it.
Social conservatives were outspent and outmaneuvered in unfriendly territory.
So why did this haven of secularism decide to put the gay man down?
Here's my guess: most people are just fine with the current definition of marriage -- even some people who who have no moral qualms about homosexuality. Like Barack Obama, they believe marriage is between a man and a women. And as long as Americans can vote gay marriage down by secret ballot, they will.
Which means that gay-rights activists will have to increasingly rely on courts to impose their will on the people. American voters may not approve of gay marriage, but when courts rule that gay marriage is an inalienable civil right, there's nothing they can do about it.
Sure, some people might be ticked off at first, but conventional wisdom says that history will vindicate their judicial activism.
Or will it?
Advocates of gay marriage assume their cause is the continuation of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. This assumption rests on the premise that marriage is simply the union of two individuals -- making laws banning gay marriages as arbitrary as the laws that prevented mixed-race couples from marrying in the past.
But social conservatives -- along with plenty of social moderates -- believe that marriage was designed to enshrine the unique male-female relationship. No one is being denied the right to get married; it's just that being married involves spending your life with someone of the opposite sex.
Ultimately, the issue isn't about civil rights. It's about the definition of an institution -- and who should be allowed to define it.
This nuance escapes the gay-rights crowd. People who disagree with them are hateful, or homophobic. And they believe that eventually, like the racists of the past, these bigoted neanderthals will quietly fade into the margins of society.
It's true that homosexuality is gaining more public acceptance, and the same thing can be said about gay marriage. But even if the entirety of secular America embraces gay marriage (hardly a foregone conclusion), the religious beliefs held by millions of other Americans will make gay marriage a controversial issue for the foreseeable future. And America's increasing ethnic and religious diversity could play a major role in undermining the gay-rights agenda. Immigrants from third-world countries tend to be more culturally conservative than their native-born counterparts, and the expanding Muslim community in the U.S might prove to be a powerful conservative force in the culture wars.
In other words, resistance is not futile; Americans will not be assimilated. Whenever an advocacy group adopts the language of inevitability, mental flags should go up. This is no exception. Maine's rejection of gay marriage revealed just how tone-deaf gay activists have become. There are deeper issues at work here than a simple conflict between bigotry and acceptance. And if supporters of gay marriage want to continue to ignore and marginalize their opponents, they should brace themselves for the sting of defeat.