Voters set back gay marriage. In California, where courts had legalized the practice, a referendum was passed to stop it. Florida and Arizona also voted to define marriage as between a man and a woman. From Gay activists jarred by California marriage defeat – International Herald Tribune:
[In California] Proposition 8 was approved with 52 percent of the vote. In Florida, where constitutional amendments need 60 percent support to be enacted, the ban won 62 percent. Arizona’s ban won 56.5 percent of the vote — reversing the result in 2006, when Arizona became the only state ever to defeat a proposed gay-marriage ban.
While legal wrangling is certain to unfold in California, gay-marriage proponents will be looking to other states for the next advances in their movement. Massachusetts and Connecticut are now the only states to allow same-sex marriage, but activists hope New York — where the Democrats now control both the Legislature and governor’s office for the first time in 35 years — may be next. New Jersey, which offers civil unions to gay couples, also is considered a gay-marriage prospect.
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