Gay marriage ban a surprise

During our presidential election earlier this month, there were a lot of other issues voted upon across the country.

Because of the focus on who our next president would be, many of those issues got much less attention than they would have under normal circumstances. Despite how massive the media has become, time restraints played a major role regarding how much attention an issue got on election night.

While the presidential election unfolded like the experts anticipated, there was a big surprise that came out of California. Voters there approved a state constitutional amendment against homosexual marriage that basically overturned a ruling by the state's Supreme Court that allowed it.

Since that ruling, approximately 18,000 homosexual couples had gotten married there, but now homosexual activists are going back to the drawing board regarding how to legalize this type of marriage.

The result of that vote stunned me. California is the last place I expected a backlash against homosexual marriage, but this proves that if a person lives long enough, he will see everything.

Along with Massachusetts and a few other states, California is usually on the cutting edge when it comes to advancing socially liberal causes. Places like Tennessee are usually derided for supporting the traditional and Biblical definition of marriage.

However, there seem to be a lot of folks in the 'enlightened' state of California that have some of the same reservations about re-defining marriage.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this vote was the demographic breakdown regarding the ban.

While African-American voters turned out in record numbers to vote for Barack Obama, 70 percent of them voted against gay marriage, according to the Associated Press. Only 47 percent of white voters cast votes against banning it.

There is plenty of irony here. President-elect Obama is considered by many to have been the most liberal senator in the country. However, his African-American supporters may have played the key role in getting homosexual marriage banned in one of our most liberal states.

Election night was a somber night for homosexual marriage supporters in other states as well. Voters in Arizona and Florida voted against same-sex marriages, too.

When looking at these setbacks, same-sex marriage advocates can't say they didn't have enough financial backing to mount their campaign. In California alone, supporters of homosexual marriage raised $43.6 million to spend on the campaign compared to $29.8 million for the other side, according to Time magazine.

Still, they lost. However, because of their ability to raise large sums of money, this issue isn't going away anytime soon.

As for what to make of all this, I'm a little confused at this point.

For a long while, I felt the homosexual marriage movement was one that couldn't be stopped.

Don't mistake that for an endorsement. I support the Biblical definition of what a marriage should be. However, the supporters of same-sex marriage are tenacious.

They have worked too hard and come too far to stop now. Though the election's results were a definite setback for their movement, it seems to have intensified their resolve to see this through.

I guess it remains to be seen whether the supporters of traditional marriage will be able to sustain their opposition to a change.

My cynical side tells me it won't happen, but the results in California have caused me to think more on the issue. Maybe supporters of traditional marriage have a lot stronger backbone than I realized.

The bottom line is this issue isn't going away anytime soon. So, get ready for a long fight.