This is all the more important now that the natural follow-up to gay bashing at the polls has begun. Notice how quickly the Mormon leadership put out their call for “healing the rift” Notice how they didn’t address it to the gay community. It was boilerplate PR…they were talking to the heterosexual majority…not to us. And that’s because we understand each other perfectly well. But there are still a lot of voters don’t really see the hate just below the surface.

They’re going to go into gear now, to to assure voters that they weren’t motivated by anti-gay prejudice. They are going to talk a lot about how they really mean gay people no harm. They are going to make a lot of very ostentatious public displays of compassion and willingness to listen to us, and engage us in civil discourse. It will be a big PR show so they can later paint gay people as confrontational radicals for pushing back when more devoted, loving couples are run through the legal grinder…as they will be because of these amendments.

We need to rip that mask of civility and “love” off and show the face behind it for what it is. We will need to be able to show voters that our anger and our activism is over real wrongs being done to real people, to real families, to real couples. We will need to show voters that when we call out the hatred of the other side we aren’t just banishing a word, but calling hate for what it is. And to do that, we need to document our struggle. Document it… Document it… Document it.

The No On 8 campaign is absolutely right: We’ve been stripped of equality by a campaign of lies, deception and outright thuggery.

The religious right has shown the world its true colors. It’s a cabal of lying, disgusting, evil people, and its actions in California necessitate its destruction as a political force.

Eighty years ago, a guy named H.L. Mencken wrote a series of articles about a trial in Tennessee in which a teacher was charged with the crime of teaching evolution. Through his writings on the Scopes Trial, Mencken helped turn Christian fundamentalism into a national joke and humiliated those who sought to impose it on the rest of society.

That’s what we need to do now. Highlight the abuses and chicanery of the Yes On 8 campaign, and once again help eviscerate the religious right.

Start sharpening your tongues and writing op-eds, letters and blog posts.

Each fight, each battle, proves that the forces of bigotry and darkness are losing their grip. Their margins of victory become ever smaller. Their arguments become ever more shrill and false.

It is natural to be disheartened, but please avoid the temptation of becoming bitter and vengeful. Tomorrow is another day and we will certainly achieve equality for ourselves and for others.