In the nine days since 52 percent of California voters passed an amendment to their state constitution to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry, thousands of gay, lesbiaan, bisexual and transgender activists and their allies have poured into the streets to protest.

In addition, three lawsuits have been filed, at least two calls have been made for boycotts – including a boycott of state taxes – and the state’s attorney general has tried to assure the 18,000 married same-sex couples their marriages will remain valid.

California’s GLBT organizations remain determined to push for marriage equality in the Golden State and in other states.

And amidst all of the reaction, there are still approximately 2.7 million votes to count.

The margin of victory for the proponents of Proposition 8, the same-sex marriage ban, has slimmed since the No on 8 campaign conceded Nov. 6.

The Secretary of State’s office – as of Nov. 10 at 10 a.m. eastern standard time – reported 5,668,960 voters supported Proposition 8, while 5,173,113 voted against it on Nov. 4. The difference is 495,847 votes.

Two days after the election, the difference was 504,479 votes.

A story in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times noted “roughly” 2.7 million late, mail-in, damaged or challenged ballots still need to be counted. In some cases, ballots are damaged during handling, and in others a voter’s right to vote is challenged. The newspaper said its estimate comes from reports filed by voter registration officials from California’s 58 counties and interviews with officials in the state’s largest counties.

The Times did not suggest the uncounted votes would close the margin and change the result of the voting.

“In order to reverse that result,” according to the Times, “opponents of the measure would have to win just more than 59 percent of the uncounted ballots.” So far, they’ve won only 47.6 percent of them.

The GLBT community isn’t wasting time on the uncounted votes waiting on a comeback victory – some are venting, others are suing, and many are marching.

Passionate, peaceful protests were organized in nearly every one of the state’s major cities last week – including San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles and Sacramento. Some protested outside the Mormon temple in Oakland and the Saddleback Church in Orange County, two of the religious organizations that supported Proposition 8. Petitions have circulated online to call for the Mormon church to lose its tax-exempt status.

Gay political blogger John Aravois suggested a boycott of ski resorts in Utah – where millions of dollars were donated by members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to support Proposition 8 – and a Hollywood boycott of the immensely popular Sundance Film Festival which is held in Utah each January.

Well-known and popular rock singer Melissa Etheridge posted her reaction to California’s vote on her Web site.

“I am taking that to mean I do not have to pay my state taxes because I am not a full citizen,” Etheridge wrote. “I mean that would just be wrong, to make someone pay taxes and not give them the same rights; sounds sort of like that taxation without representation thing from the history books.”

In San Diego, more than 8,000 people gathered to march through the city’s gay neighborhoods.

And, the marching shows no sign of slowing.

This week, organizers formed Join the Impact, a nationwide effort to raise awareness about Proposition 8 and the eliminated right of same-sex couples to marry. In cities across the United States, marches will step off at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, Nov. 15 to call for Proposition 8 to be invalidated.

While activists are taking to the streets, some are taking to the courts to see Proposition 8 doesn’t stand.

Three lawsuits were filed on Nov. 5, just one day after the election, challenging the constitutionality of the amendment to the state constitution.

One lawsuit, Strauss v. Horton, was filed by Lambda Legal Defense, the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and it argues that the vote on Proposition 8, “if it truly has been enacted, would constitute a revision of the California Constitution because it alters underlying principles on which the California Constitution is based and makes far-reaching changes to the nature of our basic governmental plan by severely compromising the core constitutional principle of equal protection of the laws, depriving a vulnerable minority of fundamental rights, inscribing discrimination based on a suspect classification into the Constitution, and destroying the courts’ quintessential power and role of protecting minorities and enforcing the guarantee of equal protection under the law.”

It also argues a “revision” of the Constitution cannot be done solely by a ballot initiative.

Famed Los Angeles attorney Gloria Allred, on behalf of longtime lesbian activist Robin Tyler and her spouse Diane Olson, filed a lawsuit. And the city attorneys of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Santa Clara County filed a joint petition to the state Supreme Court asking it to invalidate Proposition 8.

California’s Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger told CNN Sunday he supports the lawsuits and expressed his unhappiness with the amendment. He likened the struggle to that of couples seeking to strike down bans against interracial marriage in California in 1948. A Los Angeles Times editorial, however, took Schwarzenegger to task for being “awfully quiet” about the issue prior to the vote.

Meanwhile, on Friday night and 3,000 miles away, the New England-based Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders – which won the landmark marriage cases in Massachusetts and Connecticut – vowed to secure full equal marriage rights for same-sex couples in all six New England states by 2012.

Massachusetts, as of May 2004, and Connecticut, as of yesterday, are already issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Vermont and New Hampshire have civil unions. Rhode Island couples can obtain marriage licenses in Massachusetts or Connecticut. Only Maine has no legal recognition yet for same-sex relationships.

And as GLAD’s lead attorney, Mary Bonauto, pointed out to the record-breaking crowd at its Spirit of Justice dinner in Boston, the Iowa Supreme Court will soon rule on equal marriage rights in that state and the legislatures of New York and New Jersey have recently won new Democratic majorities that could approve equal marriage rights in those states as early as next year.

In hopes of improving chances for openly GLBT candidates to win appointments, the Gay & Lesbian Leadership Institute formed a “Presidential Appointments Projects” to solicit and vet applications from members of the community and then submit them to the new administration. More than 1,300 people have applied. The group is also hosting a four-day conference in Washington, D.C., early next month to convene GLBT leaders in a discussion of appointments and what the new administration means for the movement.

But in California, the negative impact of Proposition 8 was felt immediately for gay couples.

According to news reports, a gay male couple sought a marriage license in Sacramento on Nov. 5, and was turned away. California Attorney General Jerry Brown said the same day the state would continue to recognize the marriage licenses of an estimated 18,000 or more same-sex couples who married on or before the Nov. 4 election but that no license sought after that date would be considered valid.