Bigotry in Gay Marriage Votes

The American Conservative, a conservative blog that is generally very intelligent (even though I usually have different views than it), disappointed me today. A quote from an article called "Why McCain Lost" by Patrick Buchanan:

Consider. In California, where a liberal judiciary had ordered the state to recognize homosexual marriages, voters, by 52 to 48, slapped the judges across the face and ordered the ban reimposed and placed in the California constitution. Arizona and Florida also voted to outlaw gay marriage, by landslides.

The New York Times deplored the “ugly outcome” of these three referenda and said voters were “enshrining bigotry,” thus calling the majority of Californians, Arizonans, and Floridians bigots and their Bible-rooted Christian beliefs nothing but bigotry.

Good to know what they think of us.

Yes. If your beliefs include the idea that it is okay to deny other law-abiding human beings the same rights that you have, then yes, at least some of your beliefs are bigotry. And if a state votes en-masse in line with those beliefs, then yes, the majority of that state's people (or at least, its voters) are bigots.