By now, I am sure everyone is well aware of the defeat handed to same-sex marriage hopes in the state of Maine. Much like Prop 8 in California, the religious, fearful and uneducated crept out from their hiding places to cast votes meant to deny a minority group of their basic fundamental rights, all the while somehow reassuring themselves that their lives are more fruitful for doing so. It’s like watching the sequel to a movie I didn’t much care for on the first go around. Who knows, maybe Maine is my “Transformers 2.”

I don’t have much of a stomach for things like this. It tends to weigh heavily on my shoulders. As discussed in my previous posts, I am an idealistic perfectionist, which doesn’t bode particularly well since the world will never be either ideal or perfect. Further, however, I am a romantic. I believe that the long sought secret to life is love, plain and simple. Love conquers all, god is love, and so on and so forth. Personally, I know for a fact that had I not embraced the possibilities of love by coming out and later meeting Chris, I would, at best, be a lost soul and, at worst, be dead. Therefore, when issues such as the Maine ballot arise, I tend to take it very personally. This is more than a simple policy debate or ballot measure. This is a direct insult to the core of my being, perpetrated by the citizens of the government that dares to call itself a beacon of freedom.

So, after a day of near depression, I have reached a few personal conclusions that I am sure will raise some eyebrows: I don’t think the time is right for gay marriage and I don’t think we can win anytime soon. There. I said it. The state-by-state strategy proved its point and raised awareness of the issue, but it has run its course. The easiest states to win were won and we even got a few surprises like Iowa thrown in. But there are now 31 states (including Maine) out there with laws prohibiting same-sex marriage. Even if we magically got all those laws reversed AND convinced each state’s legislative or judicial branches to grant us equal rights, it wouldn’t matter because the vote of the people would simply steal those rights away again. Let’s face it, gays are a minority group and, in accordance to the “minority” label, we will be hard pressed to EVER get a majority vote, let alone with an issue that has the full weight and pocketbooks of the Catholic and Mormon churches against it. California and Maine, two of the country’s most liberal states, serve as testament to that. Further, unlike any other civil right issue in the history of the nation, it is now proven that it simply takes the vote of the majority to eliminate any same-sex marriage rights earned. This means that no state that ever declares its support for same-sex marriage will ever be able to guarantee that those rights will be indefinitely retained for its gay and lesbian citizens.

Therefore, I believe we need to start viewing same-sex marriage as a federal issue – which it, honestly, always has been. The problem with this, however, is that thanks to the ensuing aftermath of Roe v. Wade, in which the Supreme Court went against popular opinion to declare it a constitutional right for a woman to get an abortion, the court is more concerned with making popular decisions rather than right ones. It has already been stated that this particular court will likely reject same-sex marriage on a federal level, not because of its relationship to being constitutional or not, but because the majority of Americans do not yet support it (although the margin gap is lessening). Therefore, if the case reaches the Supreme Court too soon, and it looks to be headed there in the next few years, it will most likely be disregarded or dismissed unless popular opinion drastically shifts.

Don’t get me wrong, however. This is not to say that we should give up striving for same-sex marriage or stop fighting each battle wherever and whenever we can. There is no denying that gay rights have made huge strides in the past decade and I am hopeful that it will continue far into the next one. It’s just that I am now convinced that the struggle for equality is going to take far longer than I, or many of the gay community, originally anticipated. Although we have logic, legal and moral reasoning on our side of the debate, we do not have the power of religion, politics and fear – none of which are rooted in any sane sense of reality. Because the other side’s argument is based entirely in the elusive reasoning of faith, I’ve realized that this debate could be potentially endless and I can no longer afford to carry the frustrating weight of idealism on my shoulders when the risks are this high.

Thus, the main conclusion (or should it be the Maine conclusion?) I stumbled upon is that I can no longer rest the hopes of my lifetime with Chris in the hands of the religious, fearful and uneducated voters of this country. I will forever fight for my rights in this country in hopes that it one day actually lives up to the promise suggested by my childhood schoolbooks, but I now understand that I must take personal, financial and legal measures to insulate my family, my livelihood and my life from the unpredictable threat that my uncommitted country poses to me as a gay American. For all the strides the gay community has made, the rights that my husband and I have today as a couple in New York City (or most places in the U.S.) are, essentially, no different from those granted to gay couples at the height of the AIDS decade. And we all remember how that one turned out. For all the gains we have made culturally, there is still nothing written in the law books or in my personal case file suggesting it could not be taken away in a second by a simple ballot measure or lawsuit. Therefore, my focus is shifting to the reality that Chris and I are not equal in this country and need to protect ourselves from the rest of you.

In conclusion, when Chris and I first met, we slow danced to the Harry Connick Jr. arrangement of the song, “For Once In My Life.” In that song, there is a line that states: “For once I can say this is mine, you can’t take it. As long as I have love, I know I can make it.” For the record, I stand by that lyric wholeheartedly.