Counterpoint: California voted against gay marriage once upon a time, and overwhelmingly so. The popular (lack of) support was overridden by judicial activism. The rest of the country followed.
I would not classify 7M votes for banning same sex marriage and 6.4M votes against banning same sex marriage with 80% registered voter participation rate to be overwhelming.
The voting age population was 26M in 2008, so even subtracting non US citizens and non CA residents, there were many millions of people who did not bother to vote, and I would bet that people who wanted to ban same sex marriage were more motivated to
vote than people who did not want to ban same sex marriage.
