San Diego Gay and Lesbian News

Consider the California experience. The last published poll before the election, conducted by The Field Poll, showed Prop 8 going down to defeat with just 44 percent in favor to 47 percent opposed. And yet when Californians voted, marriage won! A majority of Californians (52% to 48%) voted to protect the traditional understanding of marriage and oppose gay marriage.

Today President Obama made history by signing into law a bill that will extend existing hate crimes laws to include “gender identity and sexual orientation,” mandate FBI tracking of anti-LGBT hate crimes and allow the Justice Department to assist in hate crime investigations at the local level when local law enforcement is unable or unwilling to fully address these crimes.

Reeling from last year's Proposition 8 loss in California, organizers are focusing on Maine’s election, stating a victory is crucial and vital to the marriage equality movement nationwide.

The campaigns to protect marriage rights in Maine and domestic partnership rights in Washington State are heating up as the two states enter the final crunch period before Election Day on November 4. We’re doing all we can to help out from here, holding weekly phone banks across California, Along with our amazing local coalition partners, we’re calling voters in Maine and Washington.

As we complete the annual independent audit from last fiscal year and the review the reports for the beginning quarter of this year, some of the overall facts are startling...

Maine is facing a Proposition 8-style”ballot measure that could strip same-sex marriage rights away by “a vote the people” on November 3.

“This city facility was supposed to protect her but instead Youth Study Center staff failed to respect her gender identity, verbally abused her, let residents physically attack her and forced her to live in fear.” - Flor Bermudez, Youth in Out-of-Home Care attorney for Lambda Legal

With more pending landmark federal legislation than we could have imagined, our collective heads are spinning just trying to keep up with it all. So here’s a quick and dirty update on the state of our civil rights in 2009.

At 2:30, Amy Mello—our field director—shared some fantastic news: EQCA volunteers, along with our local coalition partners at all our offices, made our 25,000th call to Maine this afternoon, hitting our commitment to the campaign through Election Day. The California calls are a full one-third of all the out-of-state calls supporting the No on 1 campaign in Maine. Great job, volunteers!

(PSAs) to promote the 2010 California Marriage Protection Act. Watch them. Learn from them; and share them with loved ones and family.