"Homosexuals are hellbound!"

Churches in Ohio are rallying their massive flocks behind the most strident anti-gay marriage amendment in the nation -- and the Republican National Committee is in heaven.

By Michelle Goldberg

Oct. 18, 2004 | COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Julie Reeves and Leigh Mamlin live in a split-level, stucco-and-brick house in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio, with their two children, 18-month-old Frannie and 3-year-old Charlie. Reeves, a silver-haired 45-year-old, works full-time as an administrator at Ohio State University, her alma mater, while 40-year-old Mamlin, the children's biological mother, stays home. A grey minivan is parked in the driveway and baby books are piled on the coffee table. As they sit in their cozy living room on Sunday evening, Frannie nestles in Mamlin's lap while Charlie perches on Reeves' knee.

If Reeves and Mamlin weren't lesbians, their nuclear family would seem almost anachronistically average. Because they are, they find themselves in the middle of a raging election-season culture war that could leave Mamlin and the children without health insurance and Reeves without child custody. "It's such a personal assault," says Mamlin. "We feel violated, misunderstood, misrepresented and hated by people who are ignorant of who we truly are." And it's all coming from their fellow citizens.

On Nov. 2, Ohio will vote on Issue 1, a state constitutional amendment that purports to simply ban same-sex marriage but actually goes much further. Ten other states -- Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon and Utah -- are also voting on anti-gay marriage amendments. They're all expected to pass, most by wide margins. Eight of the state amendments prohibit domestic partnerships or any other public benefits or recognition for gay couples. But as a headline on the front page of Columbus Dispatch recently said, "Issue 1 wording makes it the strictest." Polls show support for it hovering above 60 percent.

A crucial electoral battleground state, Ohio hasn't done well during the Bush era. In the last four years, it's lost a quarter million jobs. A report from the U.S. Census Bureau recently rated Cleveland the poorest big city in the country. Young people are leaving the state in droves. In August, Brent Larkin, editorial page director of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, wrote about Ohio's "raging brain drain."

But even as the state's economy decays, its big evangelical churches are thriving, and, with the tacit support of the national Republican Party, they have mobilized behind Issue 1. Preachers are exhorting flocks of thousands to vote their values in an election said to pit light against darkness. Ohio's gay citizens, a minority courted by no one, have been blindsided by the campaign against them. Many feel like they're under siege. Talk of moving to a friendlier state or country is widespread.

If passed, Issue 1 will force Ohio's cities and universities to stop offering domestic partner benefits, including health insurance. Right now, such benefits are offered by the city of Columbus, Ohio's Miami University, Ohio University and Ohio State University, the largest university in America. Cleveland Heights has a domestic partnership registry, and some Ohio public schools give gay employees family leave to care for ailing partners. Issue 1 would probably mean they could no longer do so. Because Ohio doesn't allow two-parent gay adoptions, Reeves had to go through a lengthy legal process to become Frannie and Charlies' legal co-parent. Her lawyer told her that if Issue 1 passes, her parental rights could be nullified.

The amendment's impact won't stop there. "Because the state can't create any legal status for unmarried couples, it's very possible that domestic-violence protection orders could no longer be used if there's a domestic violence situation with an unmarried couple," says Alan Melamed, an attorney and chairman of the anti-Issue 1 group Ohioans Protecting the Constitution. Private companies can continue to offer domestic partner benefits, he adds, but "if the employee feels that those benefits were being improperly denied, an employee won't be able to go to court and enforce those benefits."

Issue 1 is only two sentences long, but there's a world of uncertainty in it. While the first sentence simply decrees that marriage is between a man and a woman, the second says, "This state and its political subdivisions shall not create or recognize a legal status for relationships of unmarried individuals that intends to approximate the design, qualities, significance or effect of marriage."

Like many gay couples, Reeves and Mamlin have a whole raft of documents designed to "approximate" marriage, and they have no way of knowing which ones the courts will decide that Ohio can't "recognize." Will agreements that allow them to visit each other in the hospital still be valid? Will their wills?

Many of the amendments being voted on in November raise similar questions. Georgia's, for example, strips courts of the ability to hear cases arising from same-sex partnerships. Lawyers say that could render even private contracts between couples -- things like power of attorney and property-sharing agreements -- unenforceable.

After looking at several of the state amendments, Ken Choe, a staff attorney at the ACLU's lesbian and gay rights project, says, "We are completely perplexed by the language. We don't know what far-reaching consequences these could have if they become law."

In Ohio, that's partly why many of the state's most prominent Republicans, including Ohio Gov. Bob Taft, Attorney General Jim Petro and Sens. Mike DeWine and George Voinovich, oppose it, despite their opposition to gay marriage. "It's an ambiguous invitation to litigation that will result in unintended consequences for senior citizens and for any two persons who share living accommodations," Taft said in a statement issued Wednesday.

The Republican National Committee, though, is using gay marriage to rally its Ohio base. A few weeks ago, Reeves was horrified to find that the RNC had mailed her a voter registration form attached to a four-color flier about "protecting marriage." The front of the mailer pictures a bride and groom and the words, "One Man One Woman." Inside it says, "One Vote Could Make a Difference in Making Sure It Stays that Way."

The flier warns that "Traditional values are under attack from the radical left," which seeks to "Destroy traditional marriage by legalizing gay marriage," "Support abortion on demand and partial birth abortion," and "Declare the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional because of its reference to God."

Mamlin says she always felt accepted and welcomed by her neighbors. But now she senses prejudice massing just outside the door. "When you get a flier like the one we got in the mail and you see the polls, you know it's there," she says. "I'm glad my children are young enough not to catch on." Incredulously, she asks, "Who out there believes it is their right to vote on my life?"

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