I never said she was guilty of a crime, but she was actively campaigning to get an amendment put in the state constitution to effectively ban gay marriage. What else is her reason for wanting to define marriage as between a man and a woman except that she thinks gay marriage is abnormal? She involved herself in the debate and was therefore fair game when her own marriage fell apart due to her immense hypocrisy championing what she would probably call a "traditional" marriage. Whether she resigned out of shame or not before they wrote what they did is irrelevant. If they continued past this then I would say that it would be inappropriate, but pointing out the obvious and then letting it go is not inappropriate.



Of course there is a huge difference between opposing and persecuting, I never equated the two and still don't. Let me clarify the issue and why I feel what they did is both OK and effective. Typically, those who are opposed to gay marriage base their arguments on stereotypes about gays. Here is one of those stereotypes - homosexuality is a choice and gays are, by choice, promiscuous, not in love and thus are not able to have a long term, healthy relationship based on the principles of love and devotion and discipline like straights. That is just one common variations of arguments against gay marriage I have heard. If that were true then it would be easy to argue that, no, gays shouldn't be allowed to marry. Yet, what did she do? She broke the vows of love and devotion and lacked in the self-discipline to practice those characteristics. That is hypocrisy.
And logically, if straights are subject to failed marriages then it must mean there is no inherent power in the act of marriage - it is what the people involved in it make it. So, if straights can violate (or by contrast maintain) the "sanctity" of marriage then I see no argument that can be made to say gays can't do the same, not because they are different, rather they are the same - people subject to moral failings (or moral victories).
Lambasting one of the people who said, by her actions, that gays could not only not do something like marriage and even worse, shouldn't even be given a chance to try, for failing in her own self-righteousness is that she held over others - well, that is just sweet as apple pie.
So, in summary, the letter is effective because it makes people think about the claim that there is something inherently different between a straight marriage and a gay marriage. It is a contrast and contrasts stick out in the mind like a sore thumb. That contrast makes it hard to look away from the stereotypes that often underlie this whole effort to try and define marriage in the hetero sense. Contrast is simply put, hard to ignore. That is a lot different than just saying "We respectfully disagree with so and so." That can be tuned out, ignored and quickly forgotten. Something so glaring as this woman and her failure to live up to her own high standards cannot be so easily ignored or forgotten.

Bringing up Bill Clinton is irrelevant also. It is not a good example because whether it appropriate or not it was a decade ago and a different time, one in which gay marriage wasn't even that much of an issue (although it was starting to come to the forefront ala the DOMA). And while Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are against gay marriage they weren't/aren't trying to get amendments added to constitutions (state or federal) to try and define something a constitution probably shouldn't even be defining anyways, what a marriage should be. I didn't mean to Joel you and ramble on in response to your points but there are huge differences between Obama's and Clinton's cheating and this woman's. She crusaded to try and define marriage and what it should be (not just for her but for an entire state) and then couldn't even live up to her own standards. I don't remember Obama or Clinton trying to "protect" straight marriage against the evil wiles of the gay agenda or by what I have written then they could have been subject to a similar response.