Your damn right you lost, Abby, because this was a fight YOU started, that never needed to be fought. It really was a simple case of a devout Christian just voicing his personal views, and the HomoNazis decided to try to destroy his family business. And they pressured their political allies to join in on the bullying, this time adding illegal political pressure to try to get a Christian to renounce his beliefs.
What you've managed to do is lose and lose big. Because you managed to unite devout Christians and other people of faith, and then bringing people who didn't really give a damn, one way or another, about so called "homosexual rights," along with civil libertarians who actually care about individual religious rights, and you managed to REALLY piss us off at you. Any time you raise your head to speak your mind now, people are going to be VERY cynical and wary of anything you say.
Simply put, you and yours tried using the same tactics the Nazi Brownshirts used against Jews (and the communists) in 1930s Germany. And that really pisses many of us off.
And you're very wrong on 2 points. Number one, lessons WERE learned, and you managed to open the eyes of many people who USED TO BE SYMPATHETIC to your cause, which brings up the second point. You're VERY WRONG saying "the divide is as wide as ever." You've managed to open a fissure into the grand canyon. The divide you created by labeling traditional people of faith as "haters" and family groups as "hate groups" has probably set your cause back at least a decade.
Mark
Could you have voiced your point a little more strongly, Mark? You were way too nice.
Seriously, excellent post. And much more can be said about the demonic, murderous nature of the homosexual Left.