The Denver Post reports on a reprehensible move some frustrated gay activists took after last week's close defeat of a civil unions bill in Colorado:

A faux Facebook page rips Rep. B.J. Nikkel over her “no” vote against civil unions, saying the blood of suicidal gays is on her hands.

...The page purports to be from “Bj Nikkel Coward,” but then goes on to attack the Loveland Republican.

“On March 31st, you committed one of the greatest acts of cowardice that I’ve witnessed. You alone killed the civil unions bill … ,” an essay on the page states.

Thankfully, some who supported the bill have criticized the decision to create this mocking Facebook page in the wake of its defeat:

Republican Alexander Hornaday, who is gay and who testified in favor of the bill, was critical of the Facebook posting.

“The kind of overwrought and hysterical rhetoric from that Facebook page not only doesn’t advance the cause of gay equality, it actually retards it by needlessly antagonizing the very people we need to persuade,” he said in e-mail.

Nikkel, for her part, is standing strong:

Nikkel said she also hasn’t seen the Facebook page, but she learned a long time not to take to heart critical things written about her. She said she’s also gotten “hateful” phone calls but that an overwhelming number of people — 50 to 1 — support her “no” vote.

The Catholic Archbishop of Denver Charles J. Chaput meanwhile is urging people to thank their lawmakers:

In the face of unfriendly media coverage and heavy political pressure, opponents of the legislation did the right thing. They challenged and tabled the bill, killing it for this session. That sounds like a small act, but it took courage, especially in an environment of bitter criticism. The committee members who opposed the bill deserve our gratitude and support.

Or, at any rate, that's what Tim Gill's top lawyer Ted Trimpa told FOX 31 news:

Ultimately, the vote [against same-sex unions in Colorado] was more evidence that elections indeed have consequences.

The GOP's one-vote majority in the House won last November entitles them to majorities on all House committees and to effectively kill measures they don't like that pass out of the Democrat-controlled Senate.

As such, supporters of civil unions will now refocus on taking back a Democratic majority in the House.

Put another way, Thursday's GOP vote equates to kicking a hornet's nest -- a hornet's nest named Tim Gill.

Gill, the gay millionaire who's riches are largely responsible for the Democratic takeover in Colorado over the past decade, will now be spending millions more to defeat Republicans across the state, starting with GOP members of the statehouse.

"It might be a difference of, before, spending $200,000 [on 2012 House races], and now spending $2 million," said Gill's lawyer, Ted Trimpa.

Inexplicably, that final quote of Trimpa's has disappeared from the current version of the FOX 31 story, but the quote can still be found elsewhere.

In 2006, Colorado voters rejected civil unions by a strong margin: 53-47%. (At the same time, Coloradans voted for an amendment defining marriage as "a union of one man and one woman" by an even wider margin of 55-45%).

Last week, the Colorado House Judiciary narrowly defeated a SSU bill on straight party lines, after it was passed by the Democrat-controlled Senate.

This decision comes as a bitter defeat to gay mega-millionaire Tim Gill, who has been pouring millions upon millions of dollars into Colorado for a decade to elect pro-SSM politicians (including $5 million in 2006 alone).

In an op-ed published by Gill in the Denver Post after last week's defeat, he concluded by suggesting that he would work further to "change the legislature" if it did not change course on his issues.

Gill, whose net worth is somewhere in well north of $400 million, is a founding member of the famous "gang of four" - mega-millionaires who put Democrats in office in the CO Legislature (flipping control of the Senate in the process) and the Governor’s office. So his threat has teeth to it.

Ted Trimpa (Gill's top lawyer) has been frank with the press about what the Gill strategy means in practice:

Called “Colorado’s answer to Karl Rove” by The Atlantic magazine, Trimpa believes that to win, you must project strength. “You have to create an environment of fear and respect,” he told the Bay Area Reporter. “The only way to do that is to get aggressive and go out and actually beat them up [politically]. Sitting there crying and whining about being victims isn’t going to get us equality. What is going to get us equality is fighting for it.”

Here's the take away: politicians who voted against this SSU bill knew the risk, because the Gill political machine is so well known in Colorado.

CitizenLink, a Focus on the Family Affiliate, meanwhile notes the difficulty of communicating their pro-family viewpoint in the media.

So, on the one hand, politicians were bearing the force of the Gill political machine, and on the other hand, had reason to suspect that their position might not be accurately reflected to their constituents through the traditional mainstream media.

This means the politicians who eventually voted against the bill did so because of their conscience and because they knew it reflected the will of the people of Colorado:

[Rep]. Delgrosso, who told reporters he couldn't sleep last night, based his vote on the last time Colorado voters weighed in in 2006, when Referendum I, a proposal to recognize gay marriage, was defeated.

"A lot of the folks four-and-a-half years ago said no, they didn't support that, and I just didn't feel it was right for me as a legislator to go against what the will of the people was just four-and-a-half years ago," Delgrosso said. (KWGN)

But what remains to be seen is whether or not politicians who conscientiously reflect the views of Colorado voters on marriage will be able to continue representing those views in office, if Tim Gill and his mega-millionaire friends have anything to say about it.

Top photo: Bob Roehr