For the second night in a row, protesters took to the streets in California Thursday to voice their anger at the passage of Proposition 8, an anti-gay marriage initiative on the ballot in Tuesday's election.
"Prop 8," which limits marriage in California to heterosexual couples, passed with 52 per cent support -- even though California courts legalized same-sex marriage last June.
About 1,000 demonstrators protested outside of a Mormon temple in Los Angeles. The Mormon Church actively campaigned for the measure.
"I'm disappointed in the Californians who voted for this," said F. Damion Barela, 43, who married his husband nearly five months ago.
He said he was particularly disappointed with some minority communities that voted overwhelmingly for the ban. African-Americans, for example, supported it by about 70 per cent.
"To them I say, 'Shame on you because you should know what this feels like,'" he said.
Thursday's protest followed massive demonstrations on Wednesday night when more than 1,000 people (by some counts as many as 4,000) protested against the ban in Los Angeles and West Hollywood.
Hundreds also gathered Wednesday outside San Francisco's City Hall holding candles and carrying signs that read: "We all deserve the freedom to marry."
Police reported several arrests, though the majority of protesters were peaceful.
Legal confusion
It is unclear what the amendment means for the 18,000 same-sex couples who have married in the state since June.
Robin Tyler and Diane Olson, who were the first to get married last June, said they have already initiated a lawsuit to fight back against the amendment.
"It's never happened in American history where a group of people have been in a constitution and then taken out again," Tyler told CTV's Canada AM on Thursday,
"We cried yesterday morning and then we already had the lawsuit prepared so we knew we were going to strike -- this is definitely not the end of this subject."
Their lawsuit is one of at least a few legal challenges filed Wednesday night.
Tyler said the gay-rights movement which organized to fight Proposition 8 didn't feature enough gay couples in advertisements -- instead choosing to show celebrities and elected officials.
She said consultants decided not to show gay people or talk about the real issues.
As a result, Tyler said "the radical right was able to define the issue as teaching homosexuality to children at school," which she said was inaccurate.
"They were not strong enough and they were homophobic by hiding gay people and not showing us," she said.
Obama voters
While Barack Obama's historic victory was seen as a huge win for the progressive, exit polls showed that Obama supporters were vital in passing the measure to ban gay marriage.
Exit polls conducted by The Associated Press showed that African-Americans, who turned out in huge numbers, voted heavily in support of the measure. About seven in ten African-Americans supported the ban, while whites were about evenly split.
Analysts point out that African-Americans are more likely to go to church than whites as a reason for the difference in voting.
"We hope that we can bring them along to revisit this to understand that one person isn't free until we're all free," said Tyler.
"While Obama was a huge win for all of all, it also was very sad that this community took part in taking away our civil rights."
Meanwhile, Brian Brown, executive director of the National Organization for Marriage California, welcomed the vote banning same-sex marriage.
"Government did not create marriage, and neither politicians nor legislators have the right to redefine its basic meaning," Brown told The Associated Press.
"Common sense, and concern for the common good, trumped ideology, bigotry and power politics here in California," he said in a statement.
Andrew Pugno, attorney for the coalition of religious and social conservative groups that sponsored the proposition, said the legal action by Proposition 8 opponents is "an insult to California voters and an attack on the initiative process itself."
With files from The Associated Press
