Republican legislators who voted in favor of a controversial bill to legalize gay marriage last session are now back home in their districts, and some of them are dealing with blowback from that decision.

For Branden Petersen, the past week has been, in his words, “unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before.” It all started when the 27-year-old Republican senator from Andover told the Star Tribune that he’s likely to support a DFL effort to legalize gay marriage in 2013, just months after voters rejected a constitutional amendment to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

On the night that House Republicans voted to place an amendment prohibiting gay marriage on the ballot in 2012, Sen. Scott Dibble stood outside the chamber and vowed that Minnesota would become the first state in the country to defeat such a proposal.

Less than two weeks before Election Day, Minnesota for Marriage released its hardest-hitting television commercial in support of passing a constitutional amendment outlawing same-sex marriage. The ad featured Massachusetts parents David and Tonia Parker.