"Hate is not a family value," I told the marriage supporters. "And the 62 percent of Ohioans who came together across lines of race, creed and color to protect marriage as one man and one woman in the Ohio Constitution are not haters, and it's just wrong for anyone to call them that."
It's good to get out of the bubble, to come face-to-face with those with whom we passionately disagree.
In Indianapolis a few days later, I looked across from the east steps of the Capitol, past the protesters to the magnificent Civil War memorial, a fountain topped by an obelisk in a piazza that spoke deeply of the city fathers' grand and cosmopolitan ambitions, and of trials we can only imagine.
The protesters I can see are mostly young, and caught up in the drama in their mind. If they are to be the moral heroes, who is the villain? In their own heads, these young folks are joining a great civil rights drama. They missed the original civil rights movement; they missed the '60s; even the sexual revolution is just old hat, something their mamas did. This is their moment, here on the streets of Indianapolis or Columbus or Madison -- this is their Selma.
Only instead of a pack of cops with dogs and hoses determined to strip them of their rights, backed up by an angry potential lynch mob, there's just me, a plump middle-aged woman, speaking for millions of Americans who believe that marriage is the union of one man and one woman.
"Marriage deserves its unique status because these are the only unions that can make new life and connect those children in love to their own mother and father," I tell them.
"We love you, Maggie! We forgive you, Maggie! Jesus forgives you, Maggie!" the kid with a bullhorn shouted, trying to drown out our own speakers. They were an ambivalent group, trying briefly to raise the higher angels of their natures, like Martin Luther King Jr. But then so few of us are Martin Luther Kings. "Maggie sucks! Maggie sucks!" they chanted.
Because, after all, they are just American kids.
From the podium I spoke again. "We will fight for marriage, and we will win!" Our crowd cheers.
And then I added, "We will not forget that those who disagree with us on this issue may agree on many other things. They are our fellow citizens, our neighbors, our friends, our family members."
God bless America.