Decades after helping a college friend come out, Virginia governor urges voters to protect marriage equality

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger stood Saturday morning inside the oldest lesbian bar on the East Coast, urging voters to erase a 20-year-old constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. Three days before Election Day, the commonwealth’s first woman governor argued that a right recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court more than a decade ago should no longer exist under the shadow of Virginia’s discriminatory past.On Tuesday, voters will decide whether to remove it and affirm the right of two adults to marry regardless of sex, gender, or race.“The fact that at this moment we still have a ban in our state constitution casts a bit of a shadow,” Spanberger told The Advocate after joining Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson and Equality Virginia Executive Director Narissa Rahaman at a get-out-the-vote gathering at Babes of Carytown in Richmond.She hopes Tuesday’s vote will offer “a bit of solace or contentment to those who have lived under the shadow of our current constitutional ban.”Among those listening was Kimberly Ewton, an old college friend who had traveled thousands of miles from Germany to support Spanberger and help get out the vote.Decades earlier, the two women had visited Babes together while attending the University of Virginia. Spanberger, who graduated in 2001, also helped Ewton navigate a difficult coming-out experience with her conservative family.“There was even a time when, I don’t know, I think I was still in the closet, I’m not quite sure,” Ewton recalled. “We were both in college, and we actually came here together.”“She just was my friend that night, and it’s more than a full circle moment to come back here to see her on stage and then to get a shout-out from her,” she said.Now, the friend who had helped her find acceptance was governor, asking an entire state to provide LGBTQ+ couples a measure of that same security.When Ewton tried to describe what it meant to witness the moment, she began to cry.“I'm just r