Davina Kotulski and her wife Molly McKay (at least they used to be married in SF) at a pro-marriage demonstration last year. Marriage rights will be a distant dream if the far right succeeds in getting an anti-marriage measure on the ballot in November. T

Urgent Appeal From Equality Activists

Equality activists say people have a chance to make history. The decades-long fight for the dignity and humanity of the lives of LGBT people has come to this moment, and we can only win with the help of other activists. 

Well-funded anti-LGBT organizations are paying people to gather signatures and are using automated phone calls to put a constitutional amendment on the November 2008 ballot that would permanently exclude same-sex couples from marriage.

We need your help more than ever to defeat this initiative, say equality organizations. One way is to volunteer - just a few hours - to help encourage other people to not sign the initiative. Sign up for Equality For All’s Rapid Response team. Then, ask your friends to join as well.

“What is most troubling about this initiative is the great lengths our opponents will go to for signatures,” says Geoff Kors, Executive Director of Equality California. “Many of you - coalition partners, volunteers and concerned voters - report that the proponents of this destructive measure are harassing and deceiving people for their signatures - so please sign up to volunteer today.”

Kors says a community college employee in Southern California shared her experience: “A group of petition gatherers on campus aggressively tried to trick me into signing an anti-LGBT initiative. At first, they told me they had some petitions that I was interested in signing, but after I initialed them  -  the woman was insistent that I also sign the other petitions that she had with her  -  one of which was the Protect Marriage Initiative.” She said, “I think it is an outcry they would harass voters into signing petitions they do not believe in. I’m not signing anything I see on the streets because of them.”

In another instance, a petition gatherer in Northern California tried to sell completed petitions to someone who was opposed to the initiative: “I asked him not to turn in the signatures that he had already gathered. He said that if I donated to his church, he would give me the petitions to rip up. Underneath his card table he had a little bucket for money donations to his church. He said for $7 I could have the petition, which already had about six or so signatures, and I could destroy it. I told him that I would not do this, because it could be against the law to pay to destroy the signatures.”

These tactics are blatant harassment. “We cannot give the proponents of this initiative any accidental signatures - so please help us encourage everyone to WALK AWAY and DO NOT SIGN when they see these people on the streets,” warns Kors. “If you can’t join us as a volunteer, please forward this email to others who may be able to help.” Kors concludes, “We need everyone who cares about LGBT equality to join us now.” 

EQCA urges activists to join Equality For All’s Rapid Response Team to encourage others to not sign this initiative. “Working with other volunteers near you, our professional team leaders will call you and train you on how you can help. We only need a few hours of your time to make an impact!” Kors says. “We especially need help in San Diego, Orange County, San Gabriel Valley, Riverside and San Bernardino, Fresno and Sacramento.”

“There’s never been another moment quite like this one. So much hangs in the balance. So much is at stake,” Kors says. “The direction of this ballot measure will foretell the direction of our fight for justice. Will it be only a few more years, or will it be another 25? It is up to us.”

Interested activists should go to the eqca.org website, sign up, and volunteer.  “We can’t win without you. We are the underdogs in this fight, and it will take all of us to win,” he concludes. “We can defeat the forces of hatred and bigotry that could hold us back, but we need your help.”