CLEVELAND (AP) – A judge’s ruling that Ohio’s new constitutional ban on same-sex marriage conflicts with the state’s domestic violence law hasn’t convinced amendment backers that the divisive measure should be repealed as opponents had hoped.

The same-sex marriage ban should be thrown out because of its many unintended consequences, including a judge’s ruling that the state’s definition of marriage prohibits domestic violence charges against unmarried people, gay rights advocates said.

Backers of the constitutional amendment said the only change they want to make is to the state’s 25-year-old domestic violence law, which until now has always applied to unmarried couples.

The same-sex marriage ban, which voters overwhelmingly approved Nov. 2, denies legal status to all unmarried couples, gay or straight.

Phil Burress, president of Citizens for Community Values and chair of the Ohio Campaign to Protect Marriage, said there’s nothing wrong with the amendment that his group campaigned for.

“These [domestic violence] crimes should have the same penalty whether you’re married or not,” Burress said.

Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Stuart Friedman threw out a felony domestic violence charge that could have resulted in 18 months in jail for 42-year-old Frederick Burk. Friedman instead charged Burk, who is accused of slapping his live-in girlfriend, with misdemeanor assault that could lead to six moths in jail.

Prosecutors have appealed.

Friedman said his ruling should apply only to the Cleveland case. At least one other judge has ruled that the marriage amendment does not affect the domestic violence law.

Until an appeals court makes a ruling that applies to all courts, legal experts and prosecutors say they expect a flurry of criminal and civil appeals filed in domestic violence cases involving unmarried people. They also expect judges to rule different ways.

“Any lawyer or any defendant who made this motion could not be accused of being frivolous because they could point to Judge Friedman’s ruling,” said Jonathan Entin, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University.

Some gay rights advocates said they believed the confusion may lead to some voters changing their minds about supporting the amendment.

“In some ways for us this ruling is a blessing because it points out everything that folks were saying prior to [the amendment] becoming law, that there would be unintended consequences not just for gay and lesbian families,” said Lynne Bowman, head of Equality Ohio, a group opposed to Issue 1.

But she said the ruling also is devastating because people will be left without protections offered by the domestic violence law.

Rep. Jim Raussen, a Cincinnati Republican, said he is willing to propose changing the domestic violence law to specify that it covers unmarried couples in a bill he already has filed. The current legislation deals with bail guidelines in domestic violence cases.

But Raussen said there may not be enough time to amend his bill before it’s schedule for floor debate.

Camilla Taylor, a lawyer for Lambda Legal, a gay-rights group based in New York City, said it was obvious Ohio’s amendment was meant to ban same-sex marriages and not to affect anything else.

“The people of Ohio never intended to subject unmarried Ohioans to abuse in their own homes, and I’m sure the courts will recognize this,” Taylor said.

She said her group is worried about domestic violence victims who may suffer while the courts and lawmakers work out the confusion. Domestic violence laws offer quicker and sometimes stricter protections for victims, advocates say.

“This is a discouraging and unintended consequence,” Taylor said. “It’s something that resulted, I think, from a very sad chapter in Ohio’s history.”

Opponents of the amendment have said they fear the measure would be used to try to curtail all sorts of rights for unmarried people of both sexes, including property ownership and hospital visitation.

Bowman and others close to the issue said another example of an unintended consequence is a custody case in Columbus in which a mother is trying to use the law to prevent her ex-partner from seeing a child conceived by artificial insemination while the women were still a couple.