Have we really won?

It has become an article of faith that we have won the battle for our rights, that it is just a matter of time. But what if we haven't really won? We have won some impressive victories at the state level. We have full marriage rights in Iowa, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Vermont, and Massachusetts. We have employment rights in about half the states. We have domestic partnership rights in another five or six. But many of our victories have come in some cases against public opinion and at the wrath of a public revolt. Iowa saw the judges who voted to legalize marriage equality defeated at the polls. Maine saw marriage rights taken away at the polls as did California. We have won an impressive spate of court victories but have lost nearly every time we have gone to the polls. Just this year we lost in both Maryland and Rhode Island when we were certain of victory. What if this ends up being the new 1980's when the promise of the 1970's was strangled in its crib?

On edit, I do realize that having minority rights dependent directly upon majority vote is both bad for us and bad for the concept of rights, but in the final analysis we can't secure our legal rights without some amount of popular support. Having one party, in a de facto two party state, unalterably opposed to our rights as the GOP is, is a recipe for us never getting our rights. No country that has gone as far as we have or further, has a political party that is unalterably opposed to our rights.

civil rights issues should NEVER go to the polls. Minorities are minorities at the polls too. Equal is equal, but I learned when young that was another American lie.

Progress does not equal victory.

Eventually, hating "the gays" will no longer work as an electoral strategy.

1) Some bigots are dying off and "the kids these days" just aren't into homophobia.
2) Some bigots are meeting "the gays" and finding out they really aren't evil.
3) Some bigots are finding out that whether or not another couple is gay really doesn't affect their marriage.

So, in the long run, you will win. But you're not there yet. We have to keep fighting, because there will be setbacks.

opposition to our equality quickly viewed as absurd as Plessy v Ferguson.