FOR GAY and lesbian Americans and our supporters, there is a bright side to our recent defeats in popular votes in which our rights are put up against public opinion: That is the increasingly narrow margin by which we are losing.
I was a year old at the time of the Stonewall riots in 1969. I have seen how this country has changed in my lifetime, and I know that, as hunky-dory as I might feel here in Massachusetts with my legally wed husband, that is not the case in most states. But the margins of these hollow victories that seek to deny gays and lesbians equal rights continue to dwindle.
News flash: Gays and lesbians are never going away. We are coming out younger and stronger every year. As we see ourselves in popular television portrayed as characters just as real, compelling, and complex as the heterosexual characters, and as we engage our peers and have friends of all sexualities, we are accepted without fear among more and more people.
In a few short years those 53 and 51 percent counts that deny us a seat at the table will dip lower and lower. Cold comfort so close to the latest triumph, in Maine, of hate and oppression, but better days are coming.
It’s just a matter of time.
John W. Beck
Cambridge 
