With conservatives pushing harder on the marriage equality issue leading into this year’s presidential election, GLBT civil rights organizations throughout the country are rallying to face the upcoming challenges. Here in California, two of the state’s largest GLBT organizations – Equality California (EQCA) and Marriage Equality California (MECA) – have decided to join forces.

For years, EQCA has lobbied for GLBT rights in Sacramento and in cities throughout the state, successfully sponsoring bills that have played a significant role in expanding GLBT rights. Meanwhile, MECA has seen a tremendous amount of growth this year as an all-volunteer grass roots organization. Leaders of each organization feel they have the potential to make a powerful combination.

“Marriage Equality is made up of chapters throughout California of activists who commit themselves to bring full marriage equality to California,” said Jeffrey Mittman, special projects manager with EQCA. “In northern California their director was Molly McKay and in southern California the director was L.J. Carusone, and between the two of them – both in a volunteer capacity – they built a phenomenal network of chapters who were incredibly skilled in getting media attention and building coalitions of people in support of marriage equality.”

Mittman has recently coordinated efforts between the two organizations from his office here in San Diego at The Center. In the merger, the two organizations hope to further capitalize on their unique strengths and enhance each other’s efforts in the struggle for GLBT civil rights. McKay, director of MECA for northern California, will become the associate executive director of EQCA when the two organizations merge, while remaining the director of MECA. Mittman will remain at EQCA; his title has yet to be formalized. Both organizations will retain their respective names, while pooling their staffing and funding resources under the umbrella of the EQCA.

“They’ve never had paid staff, and that was a drawback in terms of the ability to support and grow the organization,” Mittman said about MECA. “They were looking for ways to strengthen their activist capabilities. Meanwhile, Equality California, which had incredible success in terms of lobbying and being able to effectively achieve political goals through the capital, had a wide network of supporters throughout the state, but we wanted to increase our capability to have the supporters be activists in their own right. We looked at the two organizations and found that they were incredibly complementary in terms of their strengths, and they could only get better in terms of bringing the activist members to Equality California underneath the staff support that is needed to strengthen Marriage Equality California.”

Here in San Diego, AJ Davis, The Center’s director of public policy, has headed up the San Diego chapter of MECA and is excited about the merger.

“This is a great opportunity for two organizations working towards the same goal to combine efforts under the well-respected name of Equality California,” Davis said. “MECA has chapters all across California, which now allows for local groups of volunteers who can bring Equality California’s work to big cities and small towns all across the state.”

Locally, under the guidance of Mittman and Davis, MECA has successfully launched the California Voters Project, a canvassing campaign that sends out representatives to go door-to-door and educate residents about marriage equality, the upcoming election and the proposed constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage.

“We’ve had incredible success,” Mittman said. “The numbers are great … four to one in favor of supporting marriage equality.”

Davis adds: “The canvasses are going really well. We are very excited about the increasing number of diverse folks who are willing to go door-to-door to talk to people about marriage equality. It’s easy and fun and doesn’t take much time, so this is a great way to get involved in the marriage equality movement.

“Coming up we have some really fun canvass days like ‘family canvass day’ where families led by same-sex parents will be going door-to-door to talk to other families about how important equal protections for children and all families are,” Davis continued.

Volunteers interested in joining the California Voters Project receive training at The Center to learn about speaking points and how to approach people to talk to them about marriage equality. So far most of the efforts have been focused in the central San Diego area, but Mittman plans to cover a larger portion of San Diego.

“We are also branching out in terms of working with LGBT families in neighborhoods outside the 92103,” Mittman said. “We are also exploring ways of teaming up with non-LGBT organizations and communities who have an interest in also organizing greater registration and teaching their communities, in a non-partisan way, how to use their political strength.”

Volunteers are always being sought to take part in the canvassing, and joining in is easy. On canvassing days, volunteers report to The Center at 9:00 a.m. for a short, informative and fun presentation on how to register and educate voters and how to be a spokesperson for equal marriage rights. At 10:00 a.m. volunteers get neighborhood assignments and go out in groups. Canvassing continues until 12:30 p.m., and volunteers report back to The Center to celebrate and talk about the successes of the day.

“Initially people are a little afraid of canvassing,” Mittman said. “It’s something they haven’t done before. We’re always very excited when we conduct out training on Saturday morning and we get a lot of questions as people go out and they’re a little bit nervous. Whenever they come back afterwards and we are having our fun and our celebration and eating pizza afterwards, you can’t stop people talking about the stories of how much fun they have had, the people they have met, both who support marriage equality and sometimes the more challenging conversations that they’ve had like the people they’ve had to convince or the people who aren’t supporting equal rights but certainly want to engage in a productive and positive way. Once people do the canvassing they realize how much fun it is and we get a lot of return team members.”

Anyone interested in signing up for the California Voter Project and the canvassing days can contact Mittman at (619) 692-2077, ext. 211, or AJ Davis at (619) 692-2077, ext. 212.