My husband and I were pigging out at our favorite all-you-can-eat Korean bbq when the first text came in, “So when’s the big reception!”

We immediately knew what our friend was referring to: Perry vs. Schwarzenegger and the drive to overturn Prop 8, the ballot initiative that banned gay marriage in California.

By Harold and Ellen Kameya

Twenty-two years ago, our then 20-year old daughter Valerie told us she was gay. As Sansei from Hawaii, raised in a socially conservative Japanese American culture, Valerie’s announcement devastated us. At that time, we were woefully ignorant on issues of sexual orientation, including that being gay is not a choice. As part of that ignorance, we were saddened that we would never see our daughter get married or have a family.

Now we have Maine rejecting marriage equality. The results in Maine, a state that is 95.3% white, make it clear that we can't blame the people of color who live there. So who do we blame? My hunch is that rural white voters are on the hook. But the blame placed on rural white voters will be very different in its tenor and tone than Prop 8.

I guess it was just a matter of time. The anti-gay-marriage crowd has received the approval from California Secretary of State Debra Bowen to begin collecting signatures to put an initiative on the 2010 ballot that would ban divorce in the state.