US voters elected Barack Obama, and many Democrat senators, congresspeople and governors. What else did they do?
Voters in Arizona banned same-sex marriage.
Voters in Arkansas prohibited unmarried couples from adopting or providing foster homes for children. Since same-sex couples are not allowed to marry, this is a de facto ban on same-sex couples adopting.
Voters in California banned same-sex marriage.
Voters in Florida added a ban of same-sex marriage, already illegal in Florida, to their state constitution.
To be fair to the many good people in each of those states, at least 38% of voters tried to defeat those measures. All the laws will be challenged, but the message is clear: gays and lesbians are still second-class citizens in the US.
Now please, no more questions about whether anyone wants to "move back". My friends Tom at Canadian Hope and Nick at Life Without Borders address that question. At best, it's silly and uninformed; at worst, it's downright offensive. We didn't come here for a vacation. We're putting down roots. We're becoming Canadian.
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Good people are also celebrating the defeat of a bill that would have banned all abortions except in the most extreme circumstances. After fetus lovers in South Dakota tried to ban all abortions in 2006, only to see voters reject that bill, they tried again with a similar idea, this time including narrow exceptions - the kind that amount to a tiny percentage of all abortions.
Voters rejected that, too.
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