enlarge Press Herald file

Supporters of the No on 1 campaign collect themselves at Portland City Hall on Wednesday after failing to block repeal of same-sex marriage.

Despite my huge disappointment in the news of the repeal of Maine's same-sex marriage law, I have bittersweet certainty that, in time, history will prove wrong those who voted for it – those who seem able only to imagine a society in which everyone thinks, looks, worships, and loves as they do, and worse, those who cannot understand the issue in the context of equal protection under law.

Eventually, this state and our country will embrace same-sex marriage much in the same way they came, albeit slowly, to reject slavery and anti-miscegenation laws, and to pass women's suffrage and civil rights laws, among a host of other freedom expanding gestures. Eventually we won't even remember when such an issue was an issue at all.

That our state might have led this effort in our country, at this moment, was an exhilarating aspiration. For now, gay and lesbian Mainers will persevere, continuing with their lives, teaching our children, bringing up their own children, serving in the military, making art and laws, building bridges, delivering the mail, paying their taxes, etc, as second-class citizens, unequal, under the law.

Christopher Akerlind

Portland

I have long been opposed to public ballot measures in general, but the results of Question 1 this past Tuesday have only served to reinforce how these voter referendums paradoxically undermine the American system of government.

We don't vote on civil liberties in this country. We don't allow the electorate to decide who gets freedom of speech or the right to assemble or who gets to marry whom. The reasonable pursuit of happiness is a fundamental right in this country, guaranteed and defended by our most basic set of laws, the Constitution.

If a citizen's private pursuit of happiness involves getting hitched to someone with the same reproductive parts, the government doesn't have the right to stop them. In fact, it is unconstitutional to deny that right, and putting it to a public vote doesn't make it any more constitutional.

This isn't about people's opinions or feelings about the issue. There's nothing wrong with a religion that says two people of the same gender can't get married, or that women have to wear veils or men have to grow beards, but there is something deeply dangerous when the rules of your religion become the laws of the land.

Imagine if segregation had been left up to public referendum. African-Americans and white people might still drink from different water fountains.

Those who would refute that gay-marriage and the 1960s civil rights battle are two different things are the same as those who argue that what is at issue is the sanctity of marriage. The sanctity of marriage? The sanctity of marriage pales in comparison to what is truly at stake: the sanctity of our collective civil liberties and rights.

The tired phrase, "The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins," might apply. Certainly everyone has a right to their own stance on marriage, but the beliefs of the many cannot be forced upon the few.

I am a patriot, I love this country, and I love the state of Maine, and the Question 1 referendum kills me because the process and the result are fundamentally un-American.

Zachary Brandwein

Portland

My early morning runs through the hushed streets of Portland's Deering neighborhood typically energize me for the day ahead. The sun emerging over Casco Bay, overflowing bags of leaves dumped haphazardly on the curbs, a fellow jogger's nod of encouragement collaborate to give me the strength I need to tackle the day. These dawn experiences also provide silent answers to my typically rhetorical question, "Why would I live anywhere else?"

On the morning of Wednesday, Nov. 4, however, the question was not rhetorical; it was real. It...