Last Tuesday, Maine voters went to the polls to decide if their neighbors should be treated as second class citizens. They voted on Question 1, a ballot initiative which directly asked the people if they wanted to “reject the new law that allows same sex individuals to marry.”  A defeat of the initiative would have been a watershed moment. It would have been the first time the voters of any state affirmed the rights of gays to marry. It would have been a loud bellwether that voters are comfortable with gay and lesbian couples, and that bigotry is rapidly declining in America.

Moreover, it would have paved the way for greater electoral success. If Maine could have shown that a majority of voters can support gay marriage in a state that isn’t an extreme liberal bastion of the country, politicians would have taken notice. It would have shown state legislatures that they could vote to legalize gay marriage without political retribution and presidential candidates that it isn’t political suicide for them to come out in support of gay marriage.

Instead, the voters of Maine chose to take away the rights of gays to marry, 52.75% to 47.25%. More important than any political implication is what this means for the actual people this vote affects. Gays and lesbians in the state of Maine have effectively been told that they are inferior to heterosexuals and that the loving relationship that they have with their partner is invalid. It is a sobering reminder that there is real hatred, bigotry and irrational fear in every corner of the county.

Coming on the heels of California’s Proposition 8, a vote very similar to Question 1, in which California voters also took away the rights of gays to marry, this is disappointing and demoralizing. What is particularly outrageous, however, is the nature of the campaign run by the opponents of gay marriage. As in California, the Christian right ran a vicious kitchen sink campaign trying to make the fight about more than just gay marriage. They took the debate to the next level and got dirty. The primary anti-gay marriage group called “Stand for Marriage Maine” ran ads erroneously suggesting that teachers would somehow be forced to talk to kindergarteners in explicit terms about gay relationships.

Against swelling, ominous music, a disembodied voice that sounds like it should be narrating the trailer of a horror movie warns that “they are already pushing gay friendly books in preschools” and that “gay advocates would be appointed in every school building.” “Now it’s our kids who would suffer,” the ad concludes, as the image of a little girl comes up on screen.

The problem with these ads isn’t just that they are vicious and manipulative, but also that they are false. Nowhere in Maine law does it say teachers must tell their students to believe anything about gay marriage. It is absurd to think that the state would instruct teachers to advocate any topic, let alone a controversial one like gay rights. The objective of opponents in this campaign was not to make reasonable, reality-based points about what marriage should be, but to terrify and confuse voters into voting to take away civil liberties from a specific group.

Sadly, these deceptive and cynical tactics succeeded. However, I can see two distinct silver linings in this cloud. Perhaps the fact that gay marriage opponents felt the need to resort to underhanded, cutthroat strategies says something about changes in the public’s view of gay rights. Opponents of gay rights have seen the writing on the wall and realized that they aren’t going to survive the 21st century if trends keep going the way they are. It is important to remember that if you go back 20 years, almost no one was even talking about gay marriage.

The public has tended to become more and more receptive to gay rights. Statistically, tolerance of gays is at an all time high. More people are “coming out of the closet,” and more people have a gay friend or relative, making bigotry increasingly difficult. Openly gay people are also increasingly common in pop culture, making being gay seem less foreign. This is why opponents feel that they can’t rely on old arguments to win elections anymore. With fewer people believing that homosexuality is unnatural or offensive to their faith, opponents need to run more intense campaigns to win. It certainly doesn’t mean that advocates of gay rights have won yet, but it gives me some hope that they will soon.

What is really exciting, though, is to see how comparatively tolerant the youths of this country are compared to their parents, and even more so compared to their parents’ parents. At the University of Maine’s Orono campus (not a well known hot bed of radical progressive activity), the students voted by a more than 4 to 1 margin to keep gay marriage legal. As with any large social change, you need to wait for the new generation to take the older generation’s place. Sitting and waiting is not the most exciting thing to do, but it does give me real hope that someday, in the not too distant future, we will all see true equality.