Gay activists jarred by California marriage defeat

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
In a heartbreaking defeat for the gay-rights movement, California voters put a stop to gay marriage, creating uncertainty about the legal status of 18,000 same-sex couples who tied the knot during a four-month window of opportunity opened by the state's highest court. Passage of a constitutional amendment against gay marriage - in a state so often at the forefront of liberal social change - elated religious conservatives who had little else to cheer about in Tuesday's elections. Gay activists were disappointed and began looking for battlegrounds elsewhere in the back-and-forth fight to allow gays to wed. "There's something deeply wrong with putting the rights of a minority up to a majority vote," said Evan Wolfson, a gay-rights lawyer who heads a group called Freedom to Marry. "If this were being done to almost any other minority, people would see how un-American this is."