When historians review the civil rights advancements of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex community in our lifetime, they will point to today in New Jersey as the golden age. Since Garden State Equality's founding in 2004, New Jersey has enacted 154 LGBT civil rights laws at the state, county and municipal levels. That’s more LGBT civil rights laws in less time than in any other state, ever in American history.

At the statewide level, the laws include a domestic partnership law in 2004; expansions of the law by 10 counties in 2005 and 2006; two further statewide expansions in 2006; a civil union law in 2006; a law expanding the state’s Law Against Discrimination to include the transgender community in 2006; and in 2008, a statute that simultaneously overhauls the state’s anti-bullying law, expands the state’s hate crimes law to encompass the transgender community, and toughens up the entire hate crimes law to fight all kinds of bias-motivated violence more effectively.

Next, Garden State Equality will win a marriage equality statute. Given the failure of New Jersey’s civil union law to provide equality to same-sex couples – at least one in five companies denies equal benefits to civil-unioned employees because the companies don’t respect the label “civil union” – Garden State Equality is closer than ever to winning real marriage equality.

At a recent national conference of right-wing activists opposed to marriage equality, in fact, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson singled out New Jersey among all U.S. states. "The New Jersey state legislature now has the votes to create same-sex marriage,” he declared. Indeed, New Jersey is the only state where the leaders of both houses of the legislature support marriage-equality legislation, and where the Governor says he would sign the bill. The debate in New Jersey now is not over “if” but “when.”

New Jersey is in a unique position to become the first U.S. state to enact marriage equality through legislation rather than through court order, like in Massachusetts.

To be sure, many organizations have played a vital role in the success of New Jersey’s LGBT rights movement. They include Garden State Equality, which has accelerated that success dramatically.

"Garden State Equality has run the most effective grassroots campaign New Jersey has seen in years." The Star-Ledger.

"Garden State Equality is so well-connected that it can mobilize people at a moment's notice, and has." The Bergen Record.

"Garden State Equality has an unprecedented active membership. Rarely do numbers come to an organization so quickly." New Jersey Lawyer.

"Garden State Equality could be a model for the rest of the country." Associated Press.

With more than 22,000 active members, Garden State Equality is no less ambitious about the scope and relentlessness of its programs than is any national LGBT rights organization serving all 50 states. We hold ourselves to the same standard and work day and night, often with a punishing intensity, to pull it off. We believe an advocacy organization should be judged not by how long it takes to fight, but by how short it takes to win. No one should have to wait for equality.

Garden State Equality's style is aggressive, to say the least. Guided by leaders from the fast-paced worlds of political campaigns and the media, Garden State Equality strives to act rapidly, repeatedly, boldly and creatively. We wake up everyday asking, how can we hit a home run today? How can we excite New Jersey anew? What can we do to outwit the hatemongers that civil rights organizations across America have never tried before?

Garden State Equality’s mission is not only to win fairer laws, but also to win justice for LGBT New Jerseyans facing discrimination, for whom we have won hundreds of successful campaigns.

Some of our campaigns have become so famous, they’ve become part of New Jersey’s cultural history. They include our campaign for the late police officer Laurel Hester, whose partner had been denied death benefits because the couple was gay; for teacher Lily McBeth, whom the school district tried to keep out of the classroom because she is transgender; for Andre Jackson, whose yearbook photo was removed by the high school because the photo featured Andre kissing his boyfriend; and for Bob Angelini, a theater director at Ocean Township High School who faced resistance in producing “The Laramie Project” because it had an LGBT theme.

Garden State Equality’s victory for Lieutenant Laurel Hester, in fact, is the subject of the documentary Freeheld, which won a 2007 Sundance Award and has just been nominated for a 2008 Academy Award.

In all its campaigns to help LGBT people in distress, Garden State Equality’s relentless grassroots activism broke down initially impenetrable resistance by anti-LGBTI authorities.

How have we done it?

Garden State Equality is New Jersey's only LGBTI-rights advocacy organization with full-time staff. New Jersey lacked such an organization until Garden State Equality's founding in 2004 – a surprising history given that New Jersey probably has the fastest growing LGBTI population in America. Make no mistake, Garden State Equality actively recruits and intimately involves volunteers. But there is no substitute for an organization whose formal daytime job is to advocate for LGBTI rights. Opponents of equality have had full-time organizations in New Jersey for years.

Garden State Equality is New Jersey’s only LGBTI-rights advocacy organization with a lobbying office across the street from the State House in Trenton. Garden State Equality has three offices. Our headquarters is in Montclair, North Jersey, a suburb of Manhattan in the heart of New Jersey’s LGBT and progressive activist corridor. Our Trenton office serves Central Jersey in addition to being our State House base. And our office in Cherry Hill, minutes from Philadelphia, makes Garden State Equality one of New Jersey’s few statewide organizations – of any kind – to have an office in South Jersey.

Garden State Equality produces the nationally renowned town meeting series for marriage equality, "New Jersey: A State That Doesn't Hate." Thousands upon thousands of New Jerseyans have attended the town meetings, smashing attendance records in every community. The series has received extensive news coverage across the state, nation and the world, generating massive public momentum for LGBTI civil rights advancements in New Jersey. The series has also helped to produce strong majority support for marriage equality in the state. By a margin of 63 to 31 percent, New Jersey voters say they have no problem with changing the civil union law to a marriage equality law.

Garden State Equality produces a wide array of other public-education programs that similarly reimagine the possibilities of the LGBTI rights movement. As legendary as our town meetings have become in New Jersey, we're a lot more than that. Our "Equality Express" motor home, for instance, travels the state to bring our message of equality to houses of worship, community fairs, shopping malls and anywhere else with a crowd. We don't merely rely on people coming to our events – we go to theirs. Our dinner series with state legislators, held in members' homes, is as aggressive as everything else we do. Two-thirds of the entire New Jersey legislature has now attended at least one Garden State Equality legislative dinner or town meeting.

Garden State Equality's grassroots operation has geographic depth as impressive as that of any other statewide organization. Recognizing that politics is fundamentally local, we have district directors and volunteer battalions, deployable upon a moment's notice, in each of New Jersey's 40 legislative districts. If we need to convince a local official to do the right thing, that official will not only hear from us at the statewide level, but also from the many Garden State Equality members who are the official's own constituents.

Garden State Equality has developed a pathbreaking program to diversify New Jersey's LGBTI rights movement – a program earning the praise of communities of color and other constituencies. Garden State Equality has an African-American Caucus, a Catholic Caucus, a Children’s Caucus, a Couples Caucus, a Clergy Caucus, a Corporate and Professional Caucus, a Labor Caucus, a Latino/a Caucus, a Real Estate Caucus and a Straight Allies Caucus, each with a large and active membership. Each caucus also has three cochairs who are among America's most distinguished community leaders.

Garden State Equality has worked tirelessly to put the transgender community and transgender rights at the forefront of the New Jersey’s LGBT rights movement, for which we have also received national acclaim. Three members of our Board of Directors are members of the transgender community. We have sent hundreds of activists from every segment of the LGBTI and straight communities to the State House to lobby successfully for transgender equality legislation. And in 2005, when Garden State Equality ran the first television commercial in New Jersey history on LGBTI rights, that commercial was about the transgender equality bill. It was the first television commercial in America on transgender rights.

Garden State Equality has created a national paradigm for how to build an LGBTI rights organization that's a genuine partnership between the LGBTI and straight communities. By our vigilant design, a significant number of our Board members, general members, volunteers and donors are straight. We believe that as civil rights movements mature, it is incumbent upon them to expand dramatically from their core base, aggressively incorporating the equal involvement of straight progressive allies.

The Garden State Equality political organization, independent from the Garden State Equality educational organization, has run the most ambitious LGBTI get-out-the-vote operations ever in New Jersey. Garden State Equality’s endorsed candidates have won their primary and general elections a remarkable 90 percent of the time. Garden State Equality has amassed this success rate not simply by sticking to safe incumbents. We’ve gotten involved in the state’s most closely fought races, including primaries, with our financial and grassroots power.

In New Jersey’s 2007 legislative elections, not among best recent years for progressives in the state, Garden State Equality completely bucked the tide and gained several new pro-marriage equality seats. We did it despite an unprecedented influx of money into New Jersey by national right-wing organizations. Politifax New Jersey named Garden State Equality a Winner of the 2007 elections.

There’s never been a more exciting time for LGBT rights in New Jersey or anywhere else in America. We at Garden State Equality would be honored for you to join our organization, even to volunteer. If the spirit moves you, we would also be grateful for your online contribution.

After all, the person who makes Garden State Equality’s work possible is you. Together, we shall continue to move the world.