I doubt that the vast majority of people who voted against gay marriage yesterday did it by accident. They knew what they were doing and were egged on by the forces of bigotry and fear.
But I wonder if some small portion of the "yes" votes on Question 1 (and the yes on Prop 8) was caused by confusion, even though the Maine ground forces for marriage equality did an excellent job getting the word out.
Just look at the need to reverse your thinking in order to vote for marriage equality:
You have to say no in order to say yes to equality --
This November, voters will be asked:
"Do you want to reject the new law that lets same-sex couples marry and allows individuals and religious groups to refuse to perform these marriages?"
Answer: Vote NO on 1.
http://action.protectmaineequality.o...
In order to uphold marriage equality, you have to vote no --
We understood from the beginning that we would be successful in upholding the marriage law only if we were able to identify our supporters and then get them out to vote.
http://equalitymaine.org/...
A no on Question 1 preserves marriage equality --
A no vote preserves marriage equality in America's most northeastern state; a yes vote would roll back the law passed by Maine's legislature earlier this year.
http://www.nwprogressive.org/...
This confusion was evident in the fight against Proposition 8 in California --
Speaking out recently against Proposition 8, the proposed constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage, former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown made an appeal for the importance of protecting the rights of same-sex couples.
And then he urged his audience to vote yes on the proposition. Brown misspoke. He intended to advocate a no vote. But he isn’t alone in confusing which side is which. As election day nears, both supporters and opponents of Proposition 8 worry that voters will be confused by a choice that can seem counterintuitive: Voting no on the initiative means voting yes on gay marriage, while voting yes means gay marriage would be disallowed.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/...
At one point I looked at the Maine election results and got confused myself -- and we've been very involved in this issue!
I think the instinctive reaction, when you're supporting something or trying to preserve something (in this case, marriage equality) is to think "yes" not "no." But in the cases of Maine and California, you had to employ a double negative -- you had to say "no" to "no." And I think the anti-gay marriage groups are well aware of this.
Maybe this accounts for at least couple of percentage points in the "yes" column. And it almost makes me think that whenever a court overturns a state ban on gay marriage, or whenever a state legislature passes a bill legalizing gay marriage, our side should short circuit the homophobes and create a referendum in which a "yes" means Yes! to marriage equality.