Despite polls showing a closer race, Maine easily shunned 
a gay marriage law on Tuesday.
With 87 percent of precincts reporting, 53 percent of voters 
said no to a gay marriage law approved by lawmakers in the 
spring.
A No on 1 campaign party that featured pro-gay marriage 
Maine leaders and prominent gay activists was broadcast 
live on the Internet. But a little after midnight, screens went 
blank as the party broke up without a resolution either way.
By Wednesday morning, however, the campaign was ready 
to accept defeat, thanking supporters.
“Thank you,” Jesse Connolly, campaign manager of No on 1, 
said in an email to backers. “Thank you for everything you 
did. Thank you for digging deep and giving one more dollar
to run our TV ads, for making those phone calls for one more 
hour.”
“Yesterday, hundreds of thousands of Maine voters stood for 
equality, but in the end, it wasn't enough,” he added.
Lee Swislow, the executive director of Gay & Lesbian 
Advocates & Defenders (GLAD), the Boston-based group 
that first won marriage rights for gay couples in Massachusetts, 
called the loss “painful.”
“Maine's same-sex couples – and our allies and friends all 
over the country – are experiencing a world of hurt and pain,” 
she said in a statement. “Mainers have been denied full 
equality and full citizenship in their state. We have been told 
to remain outsiders. Gay and lesbian couples must explain 
this vote to their children.”
Then bravely added, “And at some point, we will have to pick
ourselves up and fight again.”
The loss comes on the first anniversary of Proposition 8, the 
voter-approved California initiative that banned gay marriage 
in the Sunshine State after gay activists had prevailed in the 
courts.
But Maine was going to be different. Unlike California, Maine 
gay marriage backers were not afraid to put gay families in 
their ads – moms, dads and their kids – and polling appeared 
to give proponents a slight edge.
Opponents argued that gay marriage was a ploy to teach schoolchildren about being gay, the same message that won
 over voters in California last year.
“We are disappointed and disheartened by results in Maine,”
 Jarrett Barrios, president of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance 
Against Defamation (GLAD), said in a statement. “It's wrong 
to take basic rights and protections away from neighbors, 
friends and co-workers who just want the same opportunity 
to care for their loved ones and families. It's wrong, unfair 
and, frankly, un-American.”
Maine is the 31st state to reject gay marriage at the ballot 
box, but the first to do so after lawmakers approved the 
measure.