slow, deliberate steps….we'll get there people, equality for all. We just have more than half the nation to persuade that we deserve it, thats the battle, how do you get millions of people who ignorantly believe gay people CHOOSE to be gay and why should we be given the same type of rights everyone else has when one day gays could just decide to change back? Gotta teach the people we are what we are for reasons we don't understand yet and you can't discriminate against a people for being something they can't or shouldn't HAVE to change in order to be someone you WISH they were.
HOW DID WE GIVE the religious right so much weight to their opinions in the first place? I could care less that they don't accept me, fuck them, I'm not trying to shut their ignorant asses down or stop them from being bigoted assholes, why do they have the right to stop me from having tax, property, etc.rights to my partner?
JUSTICE!

John, you asked "HOW DID WE GIVE the religious right so much weight to their opinions in the first place?"

The government gave the religious right a tax-free status, hence the money to brainwash millions of ignoramuses at the expense of those of us who have a brain and use it to make our lives work for us, not against us.

Meanwhile, those of us who are fighting to protect what few rights we have and obtain full equality, are not allowed to deduct one thin dime of the money we contribute to the cause of freedom and civil rights? JUSTICE? What justice?

I'd say the deck is stacked against us, wouldn't you?

God, I am just thankful you people weren't around when the NAACP Legal Defense Fund decided to fight Jim Crow in the 1910s. That's right- the 1910s is where the movement to overturn Brown v Board ended 50 years later. Perfect as the enemy of good.

Bring the campaign down here to New Jersey. Not New England, but it is very clear here that CU's are not the same.

NJ is already headed legislatively toward CU being replaced with marriage. That's been in the news in recent months.

I think it's really cool to be anti-gay.I mean what does "gay" entail?Is it about a bunch of heterophobes trying to advance their own intolerant and narcissistic agenda?Everyone I know enjoys mimicking and making sport of the self absorbed nebbish twits who consider themselves candidates for veneration just because they are so called gay.Nobody really likes queers they just consider them material for great comedy.

@Roland Basque: Apparently you have never seen 40 Year Old Virgin or just about every other teen comedy.

why not new england?, living here in maine i have seen this state come a very long way in regards to its own identity. we are no longer a state run by and for "old yankees". Progress has been the course we have laid out. Will it be a hard sell?, without a doubt but so goes new england so goes the nation.

Maine is where the day begins for the united states. I know I will live to marry my partner of 10 years -legally, officially and without question

@Charles J. Mueller:
Charles, I don't disagree with you, but there's another piece to this. I'm not going to bash the media or the news media, but this is just a fact: The religious retrogrades (I have a problem connnecting the word "right" to them) make news. The job of the news media is to report news, not editorialize the news. Taking the Hannitys and Limbaughs out of the picture, your average moderate non-homophobic citizen who watches network news sees and becomes enured to the religious retrogrades. The network news cannot point out the destructive nature of the rr's effects – that isn't their job.

We queers make network news far less frequently and with far less positive impact. Prop 8 demonstrations make compelling stories, but, in the average viewer' mind, a protest is not immediately connected to positive emotional responses. We need to make positive news stories for ourselves. We need to make positive, community-building, warm and fuzzy news stories that networks will carry.

We need to show the average citizen that we do positive things that serve the community at large, not just ourselves. We need to show the news media that God's Love no longer serves only gay men and women – and not only people with AIDS. We need to show the media that the Gay Men's Health Crisis does outreach and education for the human community – not just the queer community. We need to show ALL the positive things that queers bring to the entire nation.

We need to stop complaining that the Red Cross won't take our blood and find a commercial blood bank who WILL and help us donate our blood to nations who will accept it.

GLAAD needs to stop giving Hollywood blowjobs for the "positive" shit they do and GLAAD needs to start creating a national media presence for us. We can't depend on Hollywood to do it for us.

@The Gay Numbers: I work in New Jersey, and I agree – it is only a matter of time before the New Jersey, and New York for that matter, legislatures grant marriage to everyone. I think attitudes are changing so quickly – my hetero coworkers regularly refer to Jersey CUs as "marriages" and use the terms "husband" and "wife" to reference couples in civil unions. And that's in South Jersey, which is traditionally the most conservative part of New Jersey.