Even though gay-marriage opponents won at California’s ballot box on November 4, they’re now trying to cut ties with some groups they consider too extreme for comfort.

While opponents of Proposition 8 take their legal challenges to the state supreme court in protest, those behind ProtectMarriage.com, which put the constitutional amendment banning gay marriage on the November 4 ballot, are trying to weed out the fringe elements.

"We represent the people who got things done, who got Prop 8 passed," Andrew Pugno, general counsel for the Yes on Prop 8 campaign, told The San Francisco Chronicle. "An important part of defending Prop 8 is eliminating arguments not helpful to our concerns."

One group Yes on Prop 8 is trying to cut ties with is the Campaign for California. Prop 8 advocates have for years been feuding with Campaign for California chief Randy Thomasson – a vocal opponent of gay rights. Pugno says the group represents “the extreme fringe and is not representative of the coalition that got it passed.”

The Los Angeles Times says that on the other side of the debate, many in liberal Hollywood who fought to defeat Prop 8 are trying to figure out how to deal with those in their industry who backed the measure. Should those who donated money to the cause be blacklisted from the industry? Shunned? What about fired?

Meanwhile, The New Yorker reports that the opponents of Prop 8, those defending equal access to marriage, think the reason they couldn’t defeat the measure this year was more their message, not substance. Hendrik Hertzberg writes:

They were complacent: early polls had shown Prop 8 losing by double digits. Their television ads were timid and ineffective, focussing on worthy abstractions like equality and fairness, while the other side’s were powerfully emotional. (Also dishonest — they implied that gay marriage would threaten churches’ tax exemptions, force church-affiliated adoption agencies to place children with gay couples, and oblige children to attend gay weddings — but that sort of thing was to be expected.) Barack Obama, like Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, had come out against Prop 8, yet the No-on-8 forces let Obama’s popularity be used against them: a mass mailing suggesting that the Democratic nominee was for it went essentially unanswered.

This year, California and Florida passed gay-marriage bans, while Arkansas approved a measure that doesn’t allow gay individuals to adopt children. “All this has about it the feel of a last stand,” Hertzberg writes.