The majority of the voters was on his side. 52.24% voted yes and there was a 79.42% voter turn out. A huge number of Californians agreed with him at the time. This is quite a bit different than segregation today since acceptance of gay marriage was quite a bit lower and it was a newer issue than segregation.

Racial integration was wildly unpopular in the south when it became a hot political issue of the day, yet that fact doesn't make the opposition to it any more palatable to modern sensibilities. The only point I was trying to make was that you can't hand-wave away something you don't want to pick a side on by saying it's just a political view when a large portion of the society you exist in see it as a civil rights issue.

Well, I guess that too has its caveats. Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama were both vocally against same-sex marriage during run up to the 2008 election, I believe roughly the same time that the Prop 8 fight was happening. They didn't switch sides until public opinion started swaying in favor of it and I've never seen anyone hold their feet to the fire or call them "absolute scumbags" over it. Well, no one that wasn't already calling them that at least.