I am not exactly sure that I can explain how it felt to be at the capitol in St. Paul, MN on the day Minnesota legislators cleared the final hurdle and the senators voted to legalize same-sex marriage.

What I hope it does is bear witness to young people that there is a future here for them in Minnesota, that there is a place where all people can get married, where we are continually working to be more inclusive, more open, and a little more whole.

It was a truly historic night -- and morning -- in Minnesota. We become the first state in the nation to beat back a freedom-limiting amendment like the one we faced. I am proud to be from the state that is the first in the nation to have faced this question and said "no."

Volunteers are on the phone, on computers, writing on paper, talking to one another, training and being trained, talking to voters about where to vote, talking to undecided voters one more time. To me, whatever the outcome of the election, this feels like freedom.

The National Organization for Marriage and its hired gun, Frank Schubert, are doubling down these final two weeks before the election with phony claims that churches and religious-based charities will be sued or punished unless gay couples are blocked from the freedom to marry.

Of all the lies that anti-gay campaigns are airing to scare voters away from supporting marriage equality, the most absurd is the claim that marriage doesn't really matter -- or shouldn't matter -- for committed gay couples.

One of the anti-marriage-equality ads in Maine splashes these dire outcomes across the screen: "Fired. Sued. Fined. Punished." In it, a spokesman for Maine's 2009 campaign to repeal the freedom to marry, a school guidance counselor, claims, "They tried to get me fired."

I can feel myself getting more brittle as this anti-gay ballot initiative heats up in Minnesota. I find myself wanting to blurt out to virtual strangers, "Can you even imagine what it would be like to have your family's mere existence up for a vote?"