Maine is famous for its lobster industry. They have yearly festivals, cooking contests, and huge intra-fishery wars, and the industry makes up a huge percentage of the state’s local income. The aggregate total of their fishing industry averaging 15% of their GDP (in 2007 being $48 billion), and lobster makes up a huge chunk of that industry, as 30% of all fishing landings. That means 4.5% of their GDP is directly lobster-related, and with 80% of America’s lobster coming from Maine, that’s a sizable industry with sizable influence.

It’s no wonder the bible-thumpers chose to go after gays instead, with estimates ranging from 1.5% (census self-identified) to 10% (extrapolated from potentially flawed data) of the population being homosexual. I mean, even if they were all fishermen, they wouldn’t make up any more than 0.5% of the GDP! They’re a much smaller lobby with much smaller monetary influence — and therefore much less money with which to fight back.

Maine had legalized gay marriage back in May, and thus far, nobody’s straight marriage suffered for it. But that never stops homophobic Christians from demanding that civil rights for a minority be put to a majority vote. We all know Christians are the majority and are the real power-brokers in the States, regardless of what they’ll tell you — that they’re the underdogs, that they’re put upon from all sides by the scary minorities. So it’s no surprise that when the religious demand that any civil rights law for a minority of people gets put to a vote by the majority, that the majority will turn out the vote and vote for “marriage = 1 man 1 woman” out of deference to their biblical teachings. I mean, Leviticus 18:22 says clearly:

Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination. -KJV

It’s a good thing the religious are around to spend over $9 million on attacking civil rights “defending marriage”, outspending the grassroots No-on-1 campaign by a factor of at least 4. All this to the exclusion of any sort of organized religious effort attacking the gigantic and profitable lobster industry that is every bit as much abomination to the Christians’ sense of morality:

11:10 And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of any living thing which is in the waters, they shall be an abomination unto you:
11:11 They shall be even an abomination unto you; ye shall not eat of their flesh, but ye shall have their carcases in abomination.
11:12 Whatsoever hath no fins nor scales in the waters, that shall be an abomination unto you.
Leviticus 11:10-12

Just think of all those sinners making all that money off of abomination! You’d think they’d be a way bigger target than the otherwise harmless gays that just want to marry one another and promise themselves to lives of monogamy. Especially given all of Jesus’ teachings about how you can’t worship God and money at the same time!

Take heart though, my gay and lesbian friends — the homophobes are dying out, literally. They are becoming the aging majority, and where they are still the majority now, they only have a few more electoral cycles left. Soon the youth of today (who split pretty well 80/20 for “No on 1”) will be the majority, and they’ll be around for many many more electoral cycles than the religious assholes that have you subjugated right now.

Blag Hag beat me to this, as well as a number of others that realized the hypocrisy well before I did. Petursey also rails on the fact that the 53% Yes-on-1 outcome shows that 53% of the state’s voters are bigoted.

Christians specifically are fond of saying they are the most tolerant people, and especially much more tolerant than we heathens. Too bad they always vote against tolerance.