While we all focused on the elections for president and to a lesser degree on the elections for U.S. Congress, we forgot to point out that Californians voted on quite a controversial bill, about which we had written in the days before the elections.

Proposition 8, which bans gay marriage in the entire state, was accepted yesterday by Californians.

The California Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that a ban on gay marriage was unconstitutional. Therefore, its opponents came up with a way to amend the state’s constitution, which would obviously make it constitutional. They lobbied hard, spent many millions of dollars, came back from behind and a majority of Californians voted for the ban yesterday.

This will bring an immediate end to the gay marriages in San Francisco, which started marrying gay couples immediately after the state’s Supreme Court overturned the previous ban.

Approximately 54% of Californians voted Proposition 8, while only 46% opposed the ban.

The debate about gay marriage is not over; it will be continued throughout the coming years. But yesterday marked an important victory for social conservatives, on a day when they lost virtually every other single battle.