A local professor at California Western School of Law who has been on the steering committee of Freedom to Marry for the last two years, is now in the spotlight of the national same-sex marriage debate.

Barbara Cox has published numerous articles and book chapters on issues concerning marriages of same-sex couples and questions of interstate recognition by state courts, and also has spoken on the topic across the country. Cox was on the San Diego steering committee for the “No on Knight”/Proposition 22 campaign, which worked to prevent the state legislature from adopting the anti-marriage statute.

“I’ve been on the steering committee since the organization started in fall of 2002,” Cox said. “The organization was started by Evan Wolfson who had been the marriage project coordinator at Lambda Legal Defense. He was concerned that the opposition to marriage had very nationally-focused organizations that opposed it and were looking at it on a national level and that the gay and lesbian community didn’t have any such organization.”

Wolfson obtained funding to put together Freedom to Marry, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to marriage equality for same-sex couples, that Cox describes as a “think tank for how to deal with the marriage issue.”

Freedom to Marry has worked with organizations like GLAAD, Lambda Legal and the ACLU, who are bringing the litigation to various state courts. They are also working with organizations like the Human Rights Campaign and the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, all on the same page to create a consistent message on marriage.

“We are fortunate to have Barbara’s scholarly and legal insight and expertise among the strong, consistent voices that advise us and help guide our work,” says Wolfson, the executive director of Freedom to Marry. “She is a committed and compassionate advocate of human rights, and she clearly understands the urgency and opportunity represented by the struggle for marriage equality for same-sex couples.”

From 1984-87, Cox was co-chair of the Madison, Wisc., Taskforce on Alternative Family Rights, which drafted that city’s domestic partnership ordinance; Madison had one of the first such ordinances in the nation. She later helped obtain domestic partner health benefits here in San Diego at California Western School of Law.

Cox holds a bachelor’s degree from Michigan State University and a doctorate of jurisprudence from the University of Wisconsin. In July 2003, she and her partner of more than 13 years, Peg Habetler, were married in Windsor, Ontario, Canada.

At its founding, the goal of Freedom to Marry was to have marriage rights for gays and lesbians. Just a year after its founding, the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage put the issue on the fast track, and Cox described Gavin Newsom, the mayor of San Francisco who began issuing marriage licenses in February, as “a wild card” that took the whole issue forward.

In addition to Cox, Freedom to Marry’s steering committee includes the Rev. John Buehrens, minister of the First Parish in Needham, Mass., and former president of the Unitarian Universalist Association; Mandy Carter, development coordinator for the Durham, N.C.-based Southerners On New Ground; Tracey Conaty, head of campaign communications for the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees, Washington, DC; Cherry Spencer-Stark, a forensic nurse consultant who serves as president of the Georgia ACLU; Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, New York; Jordan Roth, theatre and event producer, New York; Andrea Batista Schlesinger, executive director of the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy, New York; and Tim Sweeney, ex officio, Haas Foundation, San Francisco.