On the other hand, "These children tend to be less conventional and more flexible when it comes to gender roles and assumptions than those raised in more traditional families." They have more progressive and egalitarian attitudes toward sex roles. For girls, that translates into a less restricted sense of their own possibilities: Daughters of lesbians are far more likely to "aspire to professions that are traditionally considered male, like doctors or lawyers." Both sons and daughters of same-sex couples are more likely to end up working in social justice -- presumably because they witnessed first-hand some of the profound discrimination that is considered acceptable in this country.

The book's findings may seem glowingly positive to progressives -- in fact, it makes you wonder, as Belkin does, how it is that children are so rarely used as an argument in defense of gay marriage. Still, there is plenty for homophobic, strident traditionalists to interpret negatively. Some will inevitably argue that egalitarian households and other non-traditional influences pose a threat to the fabric of marriage (or something). 

Then there's this little gem, as explained by Belkin: "Girls raised by lesbian mothers seem slightly more likely to have more sexual partners, and boys slightly more likely to have fewer, than those raised by heterosexual mothers." Surely some will interpret this to mean that lesbian mothers invert the natural way of things, making daughters promiscuous and sons sexless. Of course, others like myself will be more inclined to assume that being raised in a more egalitarian household where sex roles are not rigidly enforced allows daughters to pursue sex without the usual shame imposed on girls and discourages sons from doggedly pursuing it as proof of their masculinity; in other words, it corrects for the sexual double-standards found in the world at large.

These findings are important and should be shouted from the mountaintops by supporters of non-traditional families and same-sex marriage. But statistics alone aren't likely to change political opinion when the results are so subjectively interpreted. For every person who looks at the data and concludes, as Goldberg does, that "these children do just fine," there is another who does the exact opposite -- or disregards the research altogether. Take, for example, this comment in response to the Times article: "Sons deserve and need a father AND a mother. Daughters deserve and need a mother AND a father. This is exactly what was originally modeled for us by God in the Bible."

I suspect the real reason children haven't been fully utilized as an argument in support of gay marriage isn't due to a lack of data up until now, but because so many opponents see this debate as having nothing to do with what's actually good for kids and everything to do with staunchly upholding tradition. It's perhaps a bit too generous to presume that children's well-being will actually change those minds.

“We were applying the lessons of the Obama campaign,” says Hogarth as the polls closed in Biddeford, Maine. “The No on 8 campaign was a top-down Hillary Clinton-style campaign. This was more of a bottom-up Obama-style campaign.”

In California, activists are split over whether to take on same-sex marriage again in 2010 or 2012. Maine, for many, was the dress rehearsal. “Maine might be different from California but the National Organization for Marriage in Maine (which opposed same-sex marriage) waged a cookie cutter campaign,” says Rick Jacobs, chairman of the Courage Campaign, which is considering a push to repeal Proposition 8 in 2010. “They even used the same TV ad.”

Now marriage equality supporters are having to come to terms with another loss. Same-sex marriage in Maine was repealed 53 percent to 47 percent according to latest numbers.

In California, the fight against Proposition 8 had been led by Equality California. The organization, which had been heavily criticized by many in the LGBT rights community for how it handled the No on 8 campaign, had tried to be on the offensive in Maine. They had sent 11 field staff to Maine. They had run phone banks from California that had made over 60,000 calls. “People took a day off work to make those calls,” says Geoff Kors, executive director of Equality California. “A lot of people said they had wished they had done more against Prop. 8.”

“When something bad happens, and people’s rights are taken away, that’s when a movement is galvanized,” says Rick Jacobs of the Courage Campaign. Courage Campaign set up its own phone banks in the Bay Area in people’s houses. They had four full-time staff in Maine and 11 volunteers. “We did not budget for this,” says Jacobs. “The 11 volunteers raised their own money. We raised over $60,000 from members that went directly to the campaign.”

It was looking good. For the first time, the marriage equality folks were ahead in fundraising early in the campaign. Protect Maine Equality raised $4 million, compared with $2.5 million for Stand for Marriage Maine. Equality Maine had learned from the hits the No on 8 campaign had taken in California. When the first ads about schoolchildren learning about gay marriage showed up in Maine, they were ready with a counter ad featuring Maine’s teacher of the year.

Now with Maine voters having struck down same-sex marriage, activists in California are wondering what lessons to take back home. John Bare, a San Francisco resident who is part of a donor circle that gives money to marriage equality campaigns nationwide, cautions against reading too much into the today-Maine, tomorrow-California theories.

“Maine is in no way scalable up to California,” says Bare. “Maine is French Catholic, white, middle- and upper-class.” It also has the population of the size of San Diego. When marriage equality campaigners wanted to target their message to a precise demographic they found a French Catholic grandmother and her gay son and his longtime partner. “In California we need messages for Latino immigrants and Cantonese immigrants,” says Bare. “We need more tailoring than we could afford.”

Paul Hogarth agrees. “In California there was a serious problem with outreach to communities of color. Whatever happens in Maine, we will still have that problem in California. And a lot of liberal, progressive groups are not good at reaching these communities,” he says.

But he is optimistic that some good will come out of Maine. “The campaign learned how to listen to the grass roots. It reached out to people outside the gay havens. They did not let the opposition own the religion issue. Or the children issue.”

He says, unlike in California in 2008, he at least feels he did everything he could to save same-sex marriage in Maine.

Bare worries that the loss in Maine, coupled with the recent resignation of the chairs of the National Equality March, will be a double blow for the movement. “I think the energy might go out of many who want to go to the ballot in 2010,” says Bare.

The Courage Campaign is still studying the results of a massive survey of the state’s voters to see if it makes sense to launch a push for marriage equality in 2010, says Jacobs.

But Kors of Equality California says despite putting the best face on it, “losing is always devastating. Never before has a majority voted on a minority’s right. It’s time for that to end.”

A version of this story was originally published by New America Media.

By the end of the night, the real result was clear: Maine had voted to repeal the marriage law and continue the state's prohibition on same-sex weddings.

There were some bits of good news out there for the LGBT community, however. One of their biggest issues may have gone down to defeat yet again, but gay and lesbian candidates had prevailed in races around the country. Chapel Hill, N.C., elected a gay man as mayor; Detroit's new city council president is gay as well. In Houston, a lesbian mayoral candidate will go into a run-off having won a plurality on Tuesday.

Of course, it makes political sense to pick your battles. Why not win the fight for marriage equality and then give the creaky old tradition a modern makeover? After all, conservatives' worst nightmare is that same-sex marriage will destroy the institution as they know it, and we don't want to stoke their fears. That's why same-sex marriage advocates so often publicly insist that our aim is one of assimilation: They're simply being subsumed into hetero tradition -- not to worry, they'll totally fit in and (mostly) follow your rules! But Harris-Lacewell says we've got it all wrong.

Interestingly enough, her essay was inspired by "Til Death or Distance Do Us Part: Love and Marriage in African America," a book that details how many black families managed to maintain robust, lifelong marriages throughout American slavery, despite the fact that the unions weren't legally recognized. Love can survive even without the privileges and protection of official state recognition -- of course. But, she says, the right to legal recognition doesn't guarantee a union or its endurance -- again, of course. Today, despite "formal, legal equality, marriage has never been more rare or more insecure among African Americans," Harris-Lacewell says. She goes on to argue:

Fewer people who can marry are choosing to do so. More people who do marry are choosing to exit. This is not solely about selfish individuals unwilling to sacrifice for joint commitment. Marriage itself is still bolstered by a troubling cultural mythology, a history of domination, and a contemporary set of gendered expectations that render it both unsatisfying and unstable for many people. 

This is a long and circuitous route to her ultimate point, which is that marriage needs a major overhaul. Her credo: "Let's use this moment to re-imagine marriage and marriage-free options for building families, rearing children, crafting communities, and distributing public goods." In other words: Let's campaign for true civil rights -- for everyone. Not just for couples who want to marry and adhere to the traditional rules of marriage, but families and individuals of all stripes. If marriage were to resemble anything even close to a fair and just social institution, it would support the well-being of people, not a particular ideology or institution. Not to mention, as Harris-Lacewell puts it, "contemporary heterosexual marriage is a bit of a mess."

The critical question is whether we can remake the institution from the inside out, or whether marriage is too constrained by tradition to fully evolve and needs to be demolished (at least in the government's eyes) and rebuilt from the ground up. The latter scenario represents the danger in limiting the marriage equality movement to same-sex access. So, thanks to Harris-Lacewell's essay, I now find myself considering a truly vexing question: Are we progressives fighting the wrong fight?

Ex-Democrat Joe Lieberman is so excited about the plan that he's chairing the committee. He echoes the Obama administration's argument that its $56 million price tag will be "well worth the benefit that will accrue in recruiting and retaining the best people to serve as federal employees." It isn't surprising that some Republicans oppose the idea, although the reasons they cite are somewhat suspect. I mean, when was the last time you saw them complain that a "measure discriminates against unmarried heterosexual partners"?

My feelings about the new White House strategy are mixed. Ultimately, I'll support almost any plan that furthers gay rights. And, as a 20-something, I'm proud that my generation is pushing government progress on these issues. Yet it's also disappointing if it's true that the Obama administration is boosting the bill mainly as a means to attract smart, progressive young people and not because it's the right thing to do, period. It shouldn't have to be the means to some other end. But then, this kind of wishy-washy, instrumentalist support isn't exactly surprising from a president who has failed to deliver on so many gay-rights campaign promises. Just last Saturday he promised the Human Rights Campaign he'd end "don't ask, don't tell" ... shortly before reports revealed that the White House may still view the throngs of protesters at Sunday's National Equality March as the "Internet left fringe."