THE CASE FOR MICHIGAN AMENDMENT: From the Detroit Free Press

Kristina Hemphill came of age in the San Francisco Bay area in the 1980s. She saw her first gay pride march as a 9-year-old. Her activist father took her to anti-nuclear rallies and abortion rights demonstrations as a teenager.

As an adult, Hemphill is pretty solidly on the liberal side of arguments over civil rights and affirmative action.

So how did she end up as the spokeswoman for the conservative cause in this year's hottest culture clash -- the fight over same-sex marriage?

Certainly serendipity had something to do with it (she was recruited by a friend of a friend who saw her at a religious rally at the same time the marriage campaign was looking for help). But Hemphill says she thinks something else was at work as well -- the grace of God. ...

She is a lifelong Democrat in a family of Democrats. Former President Jimmy Carter appointed her uncle Harry T. Edwards to the federal appeals court.
Hemphill says she's voted like "a typical African American, mostly for Democrats," her entire adult life (although she hasn't decided who will get her vote for president this year). ...

In conversation about the marriage amendment, Hemphill returns to her experience with a group of young women she meets with regularly in Detroit.

The organization is called In Control, and its aim is to help women develop ways to make their lives work better. They struggle with poverty and poor education and child-rearing and life, Hemphill says.

An unwed and expectant mother from the group moved in with Hemphill and her family recently. It has happened before. But Hemphill says there seems to be one consistent shortcoming in the lives of the women she helps -- responsible men. ...

She says part of her support for marriage between one man and one woman is based on the experience of growing up with divorced parents.

Her mother and father were wonderful and supportive, she says. Both remarried, and the stepparents that came into her life were loving.

"But the desire of every child is to live in a home with their mother and father," she says.

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