And that's not all these races have in common. They are blue states that polls showed would be going for marriage equality. I'm convinced there is a Bradley Effect for bigots now. But that's still not all...
These states both went for Obama by huge margins. Clearly his silence on the matter hurt the cause tremendously, and may have even been what tipped it in favor of Prop 8 in CA with his ambiguous, easily-manipulated statements about it. Obama endorsing voting against Prop 8/Question 1 would CLEARLY have helped our cause, because it's not like there are people who support gay marriage who are turned off by Obama (and if there are, it's a very negligible amount). And while people said Obama stayed out of Prop 8 because he had to get elected, why did he stay out of Maine's race as well? I doubt he was afraid of backing a loser, look at Corzine.
The answer is simple: Obama simply doesn't care about the LGBT community or their issues. I doubt he can even see the parallels between their struggle for equal rights and the civil rights movement. Fiddling while gays in Maine and California have their marriages destroyed by bigots..."fierce advocate" indeed.
But at least he's making progress at the federal level, right? Yeah, we just need to be patient. I heard he might even be reconsidering whether or not to call us pedophiles in his DOMA defense briefs! How sweet! And those endless talks with the Pentagon on ending DADT seem to be going extremely well, it's only a matter of time before he stops kicking the can.