TRENTON, N.J. (AP) – Activists often talk about a long struggle to make change.

Not Steven Goldstein, the boyish face of gay and lesbian politics in New Jersey.

“Do we wake up every day expecting to hit a home run today? Yes,” he explained. “There’s not a philosophy of, ‘If you don’t succeed today, tomorrow’s another day.’ Succeed today and succeed tomorrow.”

Fortunately for Goldstein, he has not had to be especially patient.

Since he took the job of organizing the state’s lesbian and gay residents into a cohesive political operation in 2002, the movement has had a string of seemingly easy successes, including a statewide domestic partnership law and seeing 10 counties offer benefits to domestic partners of county employees. Last year, an overwhelming majority of the state’s lawmakers agreed to expand the rights granted under the state’s domestic partnership law.

Even before Goldstein was on the scene, New Jersey was among the first states to give gay and lesbian people full adoption rights and to ban anti-sodomy laws. It’s also one of only five states that has not specifically banned same-sex marriage.

The defining moment of Goldstein’s activist career could come any time as the state Supreme Court decides whether to allow same-sex marriages in New Jersey, which are currently allowed only in Massachusetts.

Goldstein, who started working with the gay rights organization Lambda Legal before starting the statewide group Garden State Equality in 2004, is confident marriage rights will be extended to same-sex couples. In fact, he’s so confident that’s he’s on to the next battle – asking state lawmakers not to pass a constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriage if the court rules in favor of it.

Growing up in Queens, New York, Goldstein, now 44, knew he was gay, but did not tell anyone. Still, he said school bullies sensed it and taunted him and beat him up.

In 1980, as a freshman at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., Goldstein decided to do something about it: He went to a group-therapy session aimed at teaching gay people to be straight.

“I literally went to one meeting,” he said, but while there realized that being gay wasn’t a choice. “I gave this soliloquy telling how every person in the group – including the therapist – how pathetic they are. And I left with a flourish.”

It still took him about another 10 years to come out to his parents, who, he said, don’t talk to him now.

The hyperkinetic Goldstein has had several careers, including being a lawyer for Congress and an investigative television reporter. He and his partner, Daniel Gross, in 2002 were the first same-sex couple to be featured on The New York Times’ wedding pages.

As a producer for Oprah Winfrey’s talk show in the mid-’90s, he learned a trick of entertainment that guides his political strategy: “Unless you can interest people, you’re never going to educate them,” he said. So his town hall meetings and sessions with lawmakers are more “Oprah” than C-SPAN.

When about three dozen Garden State Equality activists gathered last month before a day lobbying lawmakers, he hammered home that message.

“You are people with compelling stories,” he said. “Tell them about your lives. That’s what people want to hear.”

Goldstein warned that if anyone besides him talked about poll numbers or legal or policy minutia, he would interrupt. Then Goldstein, who is big on hugs and Borsht-belt humor, gave one more piece of advice: “We’re fun people,” he said. “A lot of us are gay. So let’s be gay!”

Over the hours that followed, Goldstein, who describes himself self-deprecatingly as “shlubby” dripped with sweat as he worked meeting rooms and Statehouse corridors, buttering up lawmakers before he asked them for support.

He handed out plaques inducting lawmakers such as Assemblymember Bill Baroni, R-Mercer, and state Sen. William Gormley, R-Atlantic, into his organization’s Equality Hall of Fame and lauded them for breaking with more conservative Republicans to support gay rights.

State Republican Party chair Tom Wilson said Goldstein could reach out even more to his party, but that he’s become an influential figure.

“He knows not to ask people to do things that are too hard,” Wilson said. “He’s got a great personality. He knows how to use wit and humor and guilt. He’s a very quick study on people.”

Gina Genovese, then a Long Hill committee member, said last year Goldstein was the person she called after she was accused in letters spread around City Hall – falsely, she said – of sexual misconduct with a minor.

“There was probably no one else who could have helped me as strongly and as swiftly,” she said.

With Goldstein’s support and counsel, Genovese has since become mayor – and is believed to be the state’s first openly gay mayor.