By now, many of you may know that the ultra-right wing’s first attempt to place a measure on the June 2006 ballot to ban same-sex marriage and eliminate domestic partnerships in California has failed. This is the first time in the nation such an attempt had this kind of early defeat.

While this is certainly good news for our community, what you may not know is that the absence of this measure on the June ballot is as much our success as our opponents’ failure. Nationally, statewide and locally our community and our allies have been working together over the past nine months to build our capacity to stop and defeat such measures. Thanks to the hard work and generosity of many San Diegans, we were successful in fending off this first attempt. That this initiative did not make it onto the June ballot is a strong and important indicator that our organizing and fund-raising efforts are making a real difference.

While the measure failed to make it on for June, the backers of this discriminatory amendment may still qualify for the ballot in November 2006. In addition to this measure, there are 10 active petitions that seek to do much the same as this failed petition, and they have until late April to gather the required signatures for November.

I want to assure you that The Center intends to do all it can stop any constitutional amendment that would repeal existing domestic partnership laws or ban same-sex marriage. Whether it is working to prevent these measures from appearing on the ballot or helping to defeat these measures at the ballot box, The Center is committed to working with our allies to combat this attack on LGBT families.

Even more than assuring you, though, I want to thank all of you who have become involved with The Center’s Marriage Equality and Education Project, or with San Diegans Against Marriage Discrimination, Equality California or any other effort to work toward ending marriage discrimination. Your gifts – your time, energy and resources – have already had a tremendous impact. Now it is incumbent upon all of us to continue with our efforts.

Our success up to this point is also due to the maturation of our movement and our community. Like all disenfranchised groups, we have struggled across organizations and across issues to stop fighting among ourselves and focus our attention on the attacks being waged on us. In the last several years, many among us have worked tirelessly to build a stronger, more collaborative community and to reach outside our community to a number of strategic allies. In San Diego, the formation and growth of the San Diego LGBT Community Leadership Council is one example of such work; San Diegans Against Marriage Discrimination is another. Other strategic collaborations will continue to emerge as we continue to pursue these partnerships.

The development of meaningful partnerships within and outside of our community is difficult and time-consuming work. Collaboration requires time, compassion, mutual education, mutual support and the continual effort to find and sustain common ground. But this is the vital work of our entire movement for equality. We are stronger, smarter and better resourced together than we will ever be standing alone.

In the arena of marriage, it is imperative that we continue our work to educate Californians about the harm marriage discrimination causes to our families. We must continue to urge those who care about us and about fairness and equality to oppose these types of discriminatory measures. We must continue to talk with our family members, our friends, our co-workers, our neighbors, the other parents at our children’s schools and the people who attend our houses of worship.

We have a unique opportunity here in California; a chance to again serve as a beacon for the rest of the country and show that when we work together, these measures can be defeated. Nowhere else in the country have our opponents failed to qualify one of these discriminatory ballot measures. We must continue to build strategic and collaborative partnerships. We must continue to work together. We must continue to show just how united, determined and committed we are in our quest for justice.