N.H. primary results great news for LGBT America

Former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney's humiliating defeat at the hands of New Hampshire primary voters Jan. 8 marks the end of his presidential campaign. He'll still keep running -- he can certainly afford it -- but it's over. He radically outspent his rivals in Iowa and New Hampshire in implementing a strategy that, if it had worked, would have seen him win both states and ride that momentum through Super Tuesday and on to the GOP nomination. Instead, he now holds the distinction of being the first Massachusetts politician running for president to lose the New Hampshire primary.

And that is great news for LGBT Americans. Romney bought into a deeply cynical strategy that called for the bashing of our families and our marriages. His desperate bid to appeal to those popularly known as social conservatives (homophobes would be the better adjective), saw the man who once promised gay Republicans that he would be a better advocate for gay rights than U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy make anti-gay rhetoric a central theme of his campaign.

It didn't work.

Incredibly, he tried to distance himself from his message of intolerance in the days after his equally humiliating loss to former Ark. Gov. Mike Huckabee in the Iowa Caucuses. The man who took the time in his presidential campaign kick-off speech to state that "[T]he family is the foundation of America -- and that we must fight to protect and strengthen it," and families are made stronger "[w]ith marriage before children. With a mother and a father in the life of every child," which, as we all know, is code for "don't let the gays get married," tried to distance himself from that socially conservative message in the days before the New Hampshire primary. In a television ad titled "Tomorrow" that ran in New Hampshire just before the primary, Romney focused on his business background and said America needed "New energy, new ideas, new leaders."

Voters didn't buy it.

Meanwhile, Granite Staters picked candidates for president who support repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and the right of partnership recognition via civil unions over those who don't. With 96 percent of all precincts reporting, the top two finishers in the New Hampshire Democratic primary, U.S. Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, together won 212,581 votes. U.S. Sen. John McCain and Romney, the top two vote getters in the Republican primary, by contrast, only won 160,232. The contrast between Clinton's and Obama's stances on LGBT issues and McCain's and Romney's could not be more stark. An overwhelming majority of voters, though, prefer the candidates who back our rights.

That's very good news indeed.