Opponent to same-sex marriage won yesterday’s referendum in Maine. A slim majority has denied gay people equal treatment under the law.

But Andrew Sullivan is an optimist. He thinks there might be a recount.

I think that no matter what the outcome of this referendum will be, people will look back on this era with the same disgust that we feel when we look back on the era of racial segregation. We should remember that in 1967, sixteen American states had laws against interracial marriage. Back then, skin colour was the biological quality that made some couples’ love an abomination. Today it is gender.