A Note from Evan Wolfson
I spent a chunk of August in the Golden State, working with our colleagues at the Equality California Institute on an ambitious new initiative to "move the needle" on public opinion about gay people and our freedom to marry. The CA Equality Project will be an affirmative, sustained, and integrated grassroots, media, and public education campaign that for the first time in our movement’s history will be truly to scale, and conducted over a long enough period of time to engage non-gay people with the information they need and deserve: who gay people are, and why marriage matters. The Project will not only stimulate and shape conversations with Californians, but will give our movement lessons and models to be shared around the country for the work underway and ahead in other states. And we're going to do it on our terms — no more too little, too late, and no more just playing defense.
Why now, and why California?
Click HERE to read the rest of Evan's note.
To stay on top of developments in California, and find out how you can be part of the Equality Project as it unfolds, please visit Equality California's website HERE.
Follow developments in the movement for marriage equality on our website, and in future issues of Freedom to Marry's bi-monthly E-Update.
Reports from the Front
Todos Somos Familia
Organizers are pulling together Latino leaders, organizations, and elected officials for a "National Latino Congress." Conveners seek to establish a long-term Latino agenda and action plan, educate and train a wide range of Latino community leaders, elected officials and activists on critical issues, and mobilize Latino community leaders, with a special emphasis on establishing opportunities for new and young leaders.
Our partners at Bienestar, Lambda Legal, Equality California, and the Latino Coalition for Justice LA (a coalition of community leaders) are organizing and sponsoring a workshop at the Latino Congress entitled, "Todos Somos Familia (We Are All Family): Civil Rights and the Latino/a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Community," on Wednesday, September 6 from 10am to noon. Freedom to Marry is proud to have signed on as an endorser of this important conference.
Click HERE for more information.
Sharing Our Stories
Nigel and Alvin live in Upper Marlboro in Prince George's County, Maryland, and have been together for six years. They have a 7-year-old son, and are in the process of adopting another 7-year-old boy and his biological sister, who is 9.
"I have long felt as married as anyone who loves and lives with their spouse, raises kids, owns a home, and even drives a minivan," Nigel says. "Although we are a family in every way imaginable - a family with one military veteran and one federal employee - we are not fully protected as a family under the law."
Read the rest, and more like this, in our STORY CENTER or submit your own story HERE.
Freedom to Marry Welcomes Two New Voices of Equality
Named by Essence magazine as one of the 50 most inspiring African Americans, Rev. Dr. Michael Eric Dyson is the author of the 2004 NAACP Image Award winner for outstanding nonfiction literary work, Why I Love Black Women and the national best-seller Open Mike: Reflections on Philosophy, Race, Sex, Culture and Religion. He is the author of eleven books and is the Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Religious Studies and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.
Philanthropist James C. Hormel is a long-time leader and benefactor in our movement. He served as a member of the 1996 U.S. delegations to the United Nations General Assembly and the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, and the boards of directors of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and the American Foundation for AIDS Research. He was appointed United States Ambassador to Luxembourg by President Bill Clinton in 1999.
Click HERE to meet the rest of Freedom to Marry's Voices of Equality.
The Latest News
For the latest news, opinions, and polls, including these articles, check out our website.
South Africa plans equal marriage law
African News Dimension
August 26, 2006
Reuters yesterday quoted government spokesman Themba Maseko as saying that the cabinet had approved an equal marriage law. The bill, which must still be adopted by Parliament, came to be after the country's highest court ruled it was unconstitutional to deny gay people the right to marry.
OPINION: The long march to equality
Ballard News Tribune
August 22, 2006
The court is holding us to double standards. It acknowledged that the State doesn't require heterosexual couples to be able to have children naturally. But it said that applying the standard to us is rational. It acknowledged that marriage is a fundamental civil right - for heterosexuals but not for gay people. It acknowledged that convicts serving time in prison have a fundamental right to marry - but a class of law-abiding citizens does not. It acknowledged that gender discrimination is illegal. But keeping us from marrying because of our gender is not.
INTERVIEW: Evan Wolfson brings message to Seattle
Seattle Gay News
August 18, 2006
We are not asking for too much. We are asking for what we deserve and the more we make the case the more people are coming to understand that. The set backs are a predictable and inescapable feature of struggle. ... It's just unrealistic to think that we can ask America to change the way it has imposed second class citizenship on Gay people and their loved ones without having defeat as well as victories. Unfortunately, we have to live through both but - if we battle through both - we will bring ourselves to a full triumph.
