All-American Fran: in a comprehensive ad campaign, Fran Drescher and the ACLU speak out on same-sex marriage.

Since its founding in 1920 the American Civil Liberties Union, the nation's leading free speech advocacy group, has taken plenty of hits for defending Americans' right to differ. That emphatically includes support for gay rights. Among its many gay-friendly activities, the ACLU supports gays in criminal and civil eases (including Lawrence v. Texas, which resulted in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that made gay sex legal).

Few eras in America match this one for suspicion of diversity and hostility toward dissent, and the ACLU has been fighting back with its "Scrapbook for Freedom" campaign, which features individual celebrities addressing civil rights issues of special importance to them.

No doubt in recognition of her success in the long-running sitcom The Nanny, Fran Drescher was originally approached for an ad that would highlight reproductive choice for women. But she had a different concern in mind: same-sex marriage.

After all, Drescher tells The Advocate, "we should already be in the state of mind where we think, Well, of course whoever wants to be married and love each, other and choose someone to be a life mate--it's really none of our business whether they are the same sex or the opposite sex."

Drescher wrote her own copy for the ad, which portrays the wisecracking gay icon in distinctly noncomedy mode: "I am not an American who would deny anyone the right to marry the person they love because they're the same sex. I am an American who supports the right and freedom of every individual to choose their life partner."

Drescher is one of about 30 celebrities, including Deborah Harry, the Dixie Chicks' Natalie Maines, Samuel L. Jackson, and Holly Hunter, who agreed to be shot in informal settings to talk about issues that are important to them. Of the nearly three dozen ads that have run online and in magazines as varied as Rolling Stone, The New Yorker and Mother Jones, Drescher's is the first to deal with same-sex marriage.

"She was very clear about what she wanted," says advertising executive Andrew Janson regarding Drescher's ad, which was photographed by her friend Roxanne Lowit. "Within a day of the shoot, there was copy on my desk written by Fran." Janson, who created the ACLU campaign along with business partner Howard Benenson, likes what Dreseher came up with. "Creatively, it's dominant; it stands out," he says.

Benenson, who is gay, adds that Drescher chose same-sex marriage while many high-profile gay celebrities shied away--apparently in fear that it might harm them professionally.

"Those celebrities wanted to do it, but their management wouldn't allow it," Benenson says, declining to name names. "To me, that's a pretty scary message. But it's reality."

With her usual down-to-earth good sense, Drescher sums up her stance: "I'm getting very concerned that the separation between church and state is beginning to blur. The very thing we go into the Middle East to fight--namely a government that is imposing its religious values on the whole country--is the very thing that seems to be occurring right under our noses."