Maryland religious leader and onetime D.C. resident Bishop Harry Jackson is still waging a battle against marriage equality, and yesterday he accused President Obama of having been paid to come out and say that he supported same-sex marriage.

Though they succeeded in the Senate, proponents of same-sex marriage in Maryland simply couldn’t muster the votes in the General Assembly last year. This year, they hope that a stronger coalition and support from Gov. Martin O’Malley will make Maryland the eighth jurisdiction in the country to allow same-sex marriage.

You know, after the highest court in the land hands you yet another defeat, you think you’d shake hands and admit that maybe, just maybe, you’d lost this one battle. But that’s not the custom of opponents of same-sex marriage in the District, who took this week’s Supreme Court decision not to hear an appeal on marriage equality as a, well, declaration of war.

Last week, we noted that the Supreme Court was preparing to release a decision on the petition filed by Bishop Harry Jackson requesting that the District’s gay marriage law be suspended pending the completion of a citywide referendum on the issue. The Court ruled today, turning away Jackson yet again.

For a cause that has been dealt a lot of setbacks, I’ll give local opponents of same-sex marriage this much — they’re fired up and optimistic that somehow, they’ll win in the end.

NOM’s Brian Brown. Wait, what? After being handed yet another defeat this week in the form of a 5-4 decision backing the District’s decision not to allow a referendum on marriage equality, opponents of same-sex marriage aren’t admitting defeat — they’re claiming that getting defeated was all part of the plan. In a statement released yesterday, the National Organization for Marriage — on tour now! — argued that while they’ve lost every battle along…

Bishop Harry Jackson has lost pretty much every battle related to marriage equality in the District, but he’s not giving up. GLAA Forum reports that Jackson’s High Impact Leadership Coalition has started distributing flyers encouraging attendees of the D.C. Democratic State Committee’s 2010 State Convention on June 12 to vote in a straw poll for candidates that have supported putting same-sex marriage to the District’s voters. According to the awesomely retro-looking flyer, attendees should…