Same Difference

They aren't even what you could call strange bedfellows, but Ashley Ewing, part of a group fighting Louisiana's anti-gay marriage amendment, and Gene Mills of Louisiana Family Forum, which is partially dedicated to ensuring a conservative outcome when the issue hits the polls Sept. 18, can agree on one thing.

In a letter penned by Mills in the July 28 Times, Mills discusses the merits of voting yes for Amendment 1. (To paraphrase the amendment's language, it defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman; the legal incidents of marriage are conferred only an such a union; it prohibits the recognition of any union of unmarried individuals; and prohibits the recognition of marriage from another state that isn't one man and one woman.) Part of keeping marriage protected, Mills says is "Marriage is a fundamental ideal that has enjoyed protection since its inception. Marriage is much more than just a legal relationship; it is the optimum setting for the rearing of children." Ewing, couldn't agree more, throwing her own input on the statement with the backing of American Psychological Association's Council of Representatives - the nation's largest group of psychologists, which recently supported gay marriage, saying a two-parent household, no matter the sexuality, is a positive influence on a child.

"I agree that marriage is the optimal setting for the rearing of children. That's one of the reasons why I think people should be in support of gay marriage," says Ewing, who, between sips of Newcastle at Caffé Cottage, spouts enough knowledge on the subject to write a pamphlet. "There are children involved in family situations where both parents are of the same sex, passing an amendment or not passing an amendment will never change that. Whether or not we want those people to be involved in marriage - well, legal marriage, which means legal rights surrounding marriage - depends on this law. If we vote against allowing people - whether you want to call it marriage or not - if you vote for it, you are taking away those rights from these families and these children in these families. And I think that is what people neglect to understand ... the families already exist, they already have rights and if you lose them it will be detrimental to the family unit."

The group, formed by Ewing and like-minded individuals who followed the developments of legal same-sex marriages in Massachusetts and the failure of the federal measure against gay marriage, sprung into action setting up a Web site (stopone.blogstop.com), writing letters and contacting lawmakers. They also realized voters needed to be swayed by ads and those ads would cost money they did not have. So what does a grass-roots group working through Acadiana's League for Equality do to raise money? For Ewing, a member of local rock group Smashley and a musician for the past 11 to 12 years, the answer was clear.

"Music has a way of giving people who normally wouldn't have a voice a voice and that is important and it is good," she says. "I think it's a way for people who wouldn't normally get involved in politics to get around people and get to talking about it and thinking about it."

To get their desired switch flicked come mid-September, Ewing threw out an invitation to as many bands as she could for a Sunday, Aug. 15, benefit at the Mojo Monkey's. Many were interested, but had conflicting schedules. To help with advertising costs, the available bands are donating their time to the cause, putting all door proceeds into the group's advertising budget. They, and other groups that could not make it, are also offering their backs as a message board: sporting T-shirts the Acadiana-based collective designed to tell voters what to do when they step into the booth.

"The people playing at the show, they might be anywhere on the political spectrum, even with the amendment," Ewing says. "It doesn't mean that they want to take rights away from people, and you can fall anywhere you'd like to. The bottom line is when you get in the voting booth, are you going to take rights away from people based on your beliefs?"

If Missouri, another conservative state, is any indication, beliefs will outweigh rights. On Tuesday, Aug. 3, voters in Missouri soundly approved a similar amendment to their constitution. MSNBC reports that with 70 percent of 91 precincts reporting, residents said yes to Amendment 2. It was the first vote on the issue since Massachusetts made same-sex marriages legal last year, sending gay couples from across the country to get hitched in the Cradle of Liberty. Missouri is among 37 other states with laws outlining marriage as "one man, one woman" (the same language of Louisiana's Amendment 1). Last week, a gay-rights group filed a suit to stop the amendment. Orleans Parish Civil District Judge Nadine Ramsey was to preside over a hearing Tuesday, Aug. 10. As of press time, the fate of the suit was unknown.

In this year alone, in addition to Louisiana, at least eight more states decide whether their constitutions should include an anti-gay marriage amendment. Louisiana's mid-September trip to the polls, where in most parts of the state the amendment is the sole item on the ballot, leads the pack to be followed by Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, Oklahoma, Oregon and Utah on Nov. 2. If initiatives pass, Michigan, North Dakota and Ohio will also ask voters to choose their side at the polling places.

"I anticipate Louisiana voters, who have historically thought and acted traditionally, will do so in large numbers in this fall's election," said Mills in a recent phone interview. "I would be surprised if the vote is less than 70 percent in favor of."

Since taking on the fight against Amendment 1, Ewing says she has heard every argument against same sex marriages. Similar to Mills, they tell her marriage should be a protected institution, speak of upholding family values and reference the Bible's stance. But Ewing remains convinced that the issue is not just about gay or straight.

"I think anything with our law and our government that will take a group of people and not just exclude them but to say you don't deserve the rights that you have, to take away rights from children, take away rights from people who have loved ones who have left them behind, I think it is important for people to speak out against that and at the very least educate people when they go to the polls for or against something like this," Ewing says. "I don't think it's anything to be taken lightly."




Mills on Ewing

Gene Mills of the Louisiana Family Forum speaks on the points

raised by Ashley Ewing.

¥ On the recent Missouri vote:

"I think it demonstrates the fact, though a plurality of people in Louisiana and Missouri and around the states think marriage traditionally has been defined correctly, that a lower court judge in Washington ruled that not allowing, not acknowledging, same-sex couples to call their unions marriage would be some form of discrimination. It just shows the urgency and the necessity, not only for a state constitutional amendment but also for its companion measure, the Federal Marriage Amendment. Otherwise, the courts are going to decide other than the people."

¥ On gay marriage not taking away from straight marriage:

"Fundamentally, the state's interest in marriage is limited, it's always as it relates to the husband, the wife and its offspring, or the children. Historically, if you were to take 10,000 homosexual, same-sex couples and there were a million acts of intimacy, in not one of those occasions does the prospect of a biological offspring, or child, exist. If you take one heterosexual couple, allow them to be unmarried and give them one encounter, the prospect for multiple children exists. So, the state's interests, fundamentally, has been the fact that heterosexuality produces children and we realize that is the state's limited interest in this equation in question. There is no comparison to the two. Now, I fundamentally, agree with my opponents - heterosexuals have done a great deal of harm to the institution of marriage, in instance to its offspring children. All you got to do is come to family court to see that. But the damage would be to say, since it's a shipwreck, let's go ahead and sink all the ships. You don't shoot a flailing institution, you attempt to right a ship that has taken on water. The way we right marriage is not by expanding its definition to some radical, new, untested theory. The way we right it is to go back to what we know to be its foundation and its morés. That is marital preparation, marital stability marital education and intervention when it's available.

" ... I agree with my opponents, heterosexuals have done great damage to the institution of marriage. I disagree - our solutions differ."

¥ On the American Psychological Association's Council of Representatives:

"I, first of all, think that the highly political nature of this committee who made this decision for all psychologists is suspect at best. I certainly understand how radical decisions are done by a small group of people. I would say that committee needs some couch time, themselves. And that is not what the people of America believe."