We are lucky. Five members of the San Diego City Council and San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders have shown more reason and more courage on marriage equality than many elected officials (and candidates) in the nation. But the war is not won and the fight is not over. Hard as it is to believe in 2008, we are still fighting to get the government out of our relationships and our private lives.

I can’t put it any better than Mayor Sanders did when he announced that he would sign the resolution sending San Diego’s amicus curiae brief in support of equal marriage rights to the California Supreme Court.

“As I reflected on the choices I had before me last night, I just could not bring myself to tell an entire group of people in our community they were less important, less worthy or less deserving of the rights and responsibilities of marriage – than anyone else – simply because of their sexual orientation,” Sanders said. “…I want for them the same thing that we all want for our loved ones – for each of them to find a mate whom they love deeply and who loves them back; someone with whom they can grow old together and share life’s experiences. And I want their relationships to be protected equally under the law.”

However, extremist right-wing groups all across our nation continue their desperate attempts to organize by using our community as a political football. And once again, that translates into an attempt to put a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage on the November 2008 ballot in California.

The California Supreme Court has not yet issued an opinion on the constitutionality of prohibiting same-sex marriage in California. We continue to hope that when it does it will find banning same-sex marriage unconstitutional.

However, should a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage pass, any potential ruling by the Supreme Court would be made moot. Such a change in the state’s constitution could perpetuate discrimination against the GLBT community for decades, bringing years of progress to a screeching halt and leaving us with no ability to turn to the legislature or the courts to debate and discuss the issue.

An out-of-state organization is, at this moment, paying people to collect signatures to put that constitutional amendment on our November ballot. They have already received more than $350,000 from protectmarriage.com and nationformarriage.org. These groups have nine weeks to collect more than a million signatures in support of banning same-sex marriage and they are willing to spend a great deal of money and effort to make it happen. They are drawing from the same communities where they are gathering signatures to try, once again, to erode women’s right to choose, attempting to piggyback on already heightened emotions.

Since 2003, the statewide organization Equality for All has been leading a large and diverse coalition of groups in California, including the NAACP, Planned Parenthood, and faith and labor organizations to prepare for a ballot fight on this issue. Equality for All is in the process of hiring experts to launch a campaign to keep the anti-same-sex marriage amendment off the ballot. If the amendment does manage to qualify for the ballot, Equality for All will be fighting to defeat it. For more information on Equality for All and the marriage amendment battle, visit www.equalityforall.com.

We are lucky. Here in California we have fought long and hard to win some of the basic rights and responsibilities that come with marriage, and are close to winning full equality. We cannot let it slip away from us now. The forces of hate and divisiveness die hard; the forces for change, love and equality for all will fight even harder.