The Republican presidential candidate may not have won on Election Day, but a slew of state-level pro-marriage initiatives did.
Among them was California’s hotly contested Proposition 8, a measure to ban gay marriage by constitutional amendment in a state where homosexuals had been permitted to marry through a May 2008 decision by the state’s Supreme Court.
A new passage will now be added to California’s constitution that states “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” This is a crippling defeat for the gay rights movement, which had argued California would lead the nation’s acceptance for gay marriage.
Similar measures passed in Arizona and Florida. Both states successfully added amendments to their state constitutions to define marriage as only between a man and a woman.
Voters in Arkansas passed a measure, “The Arkansas Adoption and Foster Care Act” to prohibit unmarried couples from adopting. This would effectively bar gay couples from adopting a child since Arkansas does not permit gays to marry.