Marriage Map

On November 4, 2008 I sat in a pub in Durham, U.K. with a bunch of other U.S. students watching the election results come in with anticipation. However, unlike most of those other students, my attention wasn’t really focused on whether Obama would be elected or not. I kept waiting to hear about the results from the three states that had ballot measures banning same-sex marriage. I was particularly anxious about my home state of California. Up until just a couple weeks before the election I had been sure that the ban would be shot down. It’s California, one of the most liberal states in the country. Yet as I sat in that pub, refreshing a website with election data every 30 seconds, I was really worried. The Yes on 8 Campaign had seemed to be so much more successful than I had thought it would be.