Fundraising for bigotry gets harder, anti-marriage equality groups find

Awww ... anti-marriage equality groups are having trouble paying to push their bigotry as the tide turns decisively in favor of equality. ProtectMarriage.com, for instance, had a $2 million deficit in 2011 and is sending out urgent fundraising appeals about $700,000 it currently needs to fight equality in front of the Supreme Court.

But gay marriage opponents' money problems go beyond legal fees for the landmark case: they were vastly outspent in four state ballot campaigns last fall, and lost all of those races. [...]

In Washington state, for instance, gay marriage opponents raised $2.8 million, compared with $12.6 million for gay marriage supporters. That's a dramatic shift from the 2008 electoral battle over California's Proposition 8, the state's ban on gay marriage, when ProtectMarriage.com took in $40 million to nearly match its opponents, and went on to win.

A ProtectMarriage.com attorney has excuses, saying, "I don't detect a decrease in enthusiasm ... What I detect is a certain degree of fatigue after having to essentially fight this issue non-stop since 2004, when the mayor in San Francisco started issuing marriage licenses." Uh, well, if your side is feeling fatigue and the other side really isn't, that says something, doesn't it? Especially if the fatigue on your side just happens to coincide with public opinion tipping away from you.

Look, it has to be hard watching an issue that you had a total lock on just a decade ago slip away from you. It has to be hard believing in something that puts you on the wrong side of history at just the moment that the bend toward justice becomes visible to everyone. But you know, if the political position to which you dedicate your life's work is keeping people from having the right to marry, I have to hope that fundraising difficulties are not the worst karmic retribution you've got coming.