doesn't help at all. i don't understand what happened there. R 71 is winning in WA, at least. Although, i think its more comforting if we don't look at the geographic breakdown of results.

One of my friends was going on about how excited he was that the Republican won in New Jersey...and I said that the only thing that really upset me in this election was Maine.

I don't even believe that they meant well. Believing that same-sex marriage harms society requires suspending your common sense* to confirm your religious beliefs and/or personal prejudices.

*Massachusetts, Canada, Spain etc. have, thus far, not been destroyed by a vengeful god.

I believe that in their mindset, same-sex relationships harm the people involved, directly, by some combination of personal degradation (moral erosion?) and otherwise separating them from God. If you believe that a personal relationship with God is more important than anything that can be found in the material, emotional or intellectual worlds, that's the greatest harm that can be done to somebody. Not my belief, of course. I'm an atheist. But I think it's roughly theirs.

By that viewpoint, same-sex marriage is awful for the people involved (distancing them from God and morality) and for society (providing an example of "harmless" distancing from God and morality). This is also roughly the same logic by which Rock music was called Devil Music, so obviously you can go to (what we now consider, fiftyish years later) some silly extremes.

But I come from the South, where these ideas aren't as culturally or temporally distant as they are in California or the East Coast.

It's not Devil Music?

i figure if, in the afterlife, some Supreme Being wants to punish them then let that get taken care of at the proper time.

of course, then again,i don't view two people in love as a threat.