Marriage Equality California held its San Diego chapter meeting on May 17 at the Exotic Bamboo Tea Shop in Hillcrest and discussed their plans of how to persuade voters in 2006 to vote against an impending ballot initiative that would write discrimination into the state constitution.

AJ Davis, director of public policy at The Center, told a group of about 30 how The Center’s marriage equality project is going to be involved in fighting against the proposed initiative.

“We’re going to do a huge voter ID campaign. This is going to come down to individual votes. We need to start talking to everyone we know,” said Davis. “If we don’t get the vote in San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego, we’re going to lose and that’s all there is to it. We have to get the vote.”

Davis explained the importance of community organizations, churches and spokespeople to talk to the media and other groups.

On May 10, the California State Assembly and Senate Judiciary committees both rejected the Traditional Values Coalition’s (TVC) proposed constitutional amendments to ban same-sex marriage and domestic partnerships by votes of 6-3 and 5-2, respectively.

Conservative groups have announced plans to begin gathering signatures to get the proposed amendment put on the June 2006 primary ballot.

The same day the amendments were rejected, Campaign for Children and Families (CCF), a statewide organization that testified against same of marriage at both hearings, announced it is writing a state constitutional marriage amendment for Californians to sign petitions for and support on the 2006 ballot.

“This disturbing display of arrogance against marriage and the voters means average Californians must take matters into their own hands and pass a constitutional amendment to protect marriage once and for all,” said CCF president Randy Thomasson in a press release.

EQCA San Diego chapter leader Nadine Jernewall said opponents of same-sex marriage are already organizing to gather the 600,000 signatures needed to get the proposed initiative on the ballot in 2006. She stressed the importance of starting the hard work now by getting as many people involved in the campaign against it.

“We’re going to need almost 400,000 votes in our favor, votes saying no to the constitutional amendment, in San Diego alone to get the constitutional amendment defeated,” said Jernewall.

Anthony White, EQCA San Diego events coordinator, discussed how AB 19, also known as the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act, is currently in the Assembly Appropriations Committee and expected to pass through to the Senate and eventually the governor’s desk. White said if signed by Governor Schwarzenegger, it would become law, but if a constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage were to exist, then AB 19 would be void.

EQCA member Andy Reese overviewed the extensive training he received at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s (NGLTF) Power Summit that was held in Long Beach May 5-8. Reese said he learned a lot from the training and will utilize the knowledge he received to fight against the proposed ballot initiative.

Dave Moore, another local EQCA member also attended the training in Long Beach and is beginning the process to train a smaller group of volunteers to train other volunteers for the campaign against the ballot initiative.

On June 4, Moore is helping to organize a mini-Power Summit in San Diego so that others can have an opportunity to receive a modified version of the comprehensive training he received at the Power Summit. The training is aimed at volunteers who would like to take a larger, more management-type role and give them all the tools they will need to construct an effective campaign against the proposed ballot initiative.

Moore stressed the importance of the ballot initiative not passing in 2006, the damage it would do on a national-scale, and how important it is to get people who are neutral on the issue of same-sex marriage to support it.

“California cannot fall. California is the nation’s leader in human and civil rights,” said Moore. “People need two things in order to vote for us, either a belief in fairness or a hate of discrimination. We got to get them one of those two things. We got to get them to realize that they have that in their hearts.”