Gay rights activists took to the streets of downtown Palm Springs on Wednesday night to call for a local push to create a national network.

More than a dozen men blew whistles, chanted and waved handwritten signs at Indian Canyon Drive and Arenas Road in Palm Springs.

The group was part of a national effort — which urged participants to take action Wednesday night — protesting a voter-approved “Proposition 8-style measure” that nullified Maine's marriage equality law on Tuesday.

The six-month-old Maine law was overturned with a 53 percent vote.

Gay advocates called the vote a “painful setback.”

“(Tuesday's) loss in Maine is a devastating blow to all who believe in equality, especially to same-sex couples and their families,” said Geoff Kors, executive director of Equality California and a part-time Palm Springs resident.

The Maine vote comes on the heels of last month's signing by President Barack Obama of hate crimes legislation that had taken 12 years to become law.

“(W)hile we are making progress, it is also clear that none of these measures should ever have been allowed to go to the voters,” Kors said. “Enough is enough. A minority group should never have to defend its rights at the ballot box.”

At the Palm Springs rally, Johnny Griffey, 56, a Phoenix resident who visits regularly, led the group in call-and-answer chants.

“Nothing like this should have ever happened in (Tuesday's) election,” he said. “We're tired of it. You can't push us back in the closet. We're here. We're human. We need to be heard,” he said.

The protesters, who also blasted disco music from amplifiers, said they want to see gay-rights groups in every congressional district across the country begin to network.

“While it seems like we're preaching to the choir here — there are a lot of gay people who live here — what we're actually trying to do is say, ‘Listen, we need to start talking to each other,'” Tanner Efinger, 25, a part-time Palm Springs resident, said Wednesday.

“We need to figure out what is it that we can do, because we have a lot of power.”

The repealed law in Maine struck an especially sour note for gay rights activists in California.

In October, a federal judge ruled that a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Proposition 8 could proceed after an attorney supporting the same-sex marriage ban could not say how allowing gay couples to wed threatens conventional marriage.

This suit says the constitutional amendment violates federal equal protection rights and was brought by two unmarried, same-sex couples who want to marry but can't under the state ban.

“Our founding fathers did not intend for people's constitutional rights to be determined by political campaigns,” Chad Griffin, president of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, the nonprofit organization heading up the federal lawsuit against Proposition 8, said.

“The U.S. Constitution guarantees equal rights to every American, and when those rights are violated, it is the role of our courts to protect us, regardless of what the polls say,” Griffin said.