When historians review the current civil rights achievements of America’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex community, they will point to the present day in New Jersey as a highlight of a golden age.  Since Garden State Equality's founding in 2004, New Jersey has enacted 210 LGBT civil rights laws at the state, county and municipal levels.  That’s more LGBT civil rights laws enacted in less time than in any other state, ever in American history.   

A 2009 year-end study by www.eQualityGiving.com ranks New Jersey as #1 in the United States for LGBT civil rights, tied with California, Iowa and Vermont.

With more than 66,000 highly motivated “core” members – those who have donated in the past 12 months or taken two actions for equality in the past six months – Garden State Equality is the largest advocacy organization in New Jersey.  Besides its meteoric growth and ability to win legislation, Garden State Equality has two achievements unique in LGBT civil rights history.    
 
Garden State Equality is the only statewide civil rights organization in America ever to be showcased in an Academy Award-winning film.  “Freeheld” won the 2008 Oscar for Best Short Documentary.

Garden State Equality was also honored to be the subject of a 2008 article in the Harvard Law and Policy Review.  To read the article, click here.

Among the 210 laws Garden State Equality has gotten enacted:

Twelve expansions of the domestic partnership law from 2004 to 2006; a civil union law in 2006; a law expanding the Law Against Discrimination to include the transgender community in 2006; and in 2008, a statewide law 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 strengthen the fight against all bias-motivated violence.  

Also in 2008, New Jersey became only the second state in the United States, after California, to mandate paid family leave to employees who need to provide care for their same-sex partners.  

And in 2009, in conjunction with his speech at Garden State Equality’s annual Legends Dinner, Governor Corzine signed an executive order mandating that the state indicate gender on driver licenses in accordance with one’s own gender identity or expression, yet another milestone for transgender rights.

Next, Garden State Equality will win a marriage equality statute.  Since New Jersey’s civil union law took effect in February 2007, many employers across New Jersey have refused to recognize civil unions as equal to marriage, and therefore do not grant equal health benefits to partners of employees.  Employers and hospitals say that if the legislature intended for the civil union law to be the same as marriage, the legislature would have used the same name.  

Because these employers and hospitals don’t recognize civil unions as they would marriage, many same-sex couples go without adequate health insurance – a horror in this economy.   And because of the real-world disparity between civil unions and marriage, some hospitals do not allow civil union partners to make medical decisions for one another, or even to visit one another in the emergency room.  
 
To read more about the civil union law and how it falls short of real marriage equality, click here to access our web page on marriage equality.

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 and could not marry.  The couple’s story and Garden State Equality’s year-long fight on their behalf, which ultimately resulted in their winning the benefits, was the subject of the 2008 Academy Award-winning documentary “Freeheld.”

Just days before she died, Lt. Hester recorded this video thanking Garden State Equality.

Other famous and successful Garden State Equality cases include those 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.

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

How have we done it?

Garden State Equality is New Jersey's only LGBT civil rights 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 may have the fastest growing LGBT population in America.  There is no substitute for an organization whose formal daytime job is to advocate for LGBT rights; opponents of equality have had full-time organizations in New Jersey for years.  But make no mistake, Garden State Equality actively recruits and intimately involves volunteers, and we are deeply proud of them. They have been key to our organization’s success.

Garden State Equality is New Jersey’s only LGBT-rights advocacy organization with a lobbying office across the street from the State House in Trenton. Garden State Equality has four offices, including in Trenton.  Our statewide headquarters and largest office is in North Jersey in Montclair, a suburb of Manhattan in the heart of the state’s progressive activist corridor.  Our Asbury Park office serves Central Jersey and the Jersey Shore.  And our office in Collingswood, 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.  For contact information for our four offices, click here.

A national leader in the sheer constancy and innovative nature of its public programming, Garden State Equality produces 15 grassroots and public education programs to advance marriage equality. Our renowned town meeting series has drawn tens of thousands of New Jerseyans to our town meetings across the state, smashing attendance records in every community. The series has received extensive news coverage across the state, nation and the world.  

Our other programs similarly reimagine the possibilities of the LGBT civil 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 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 Caucus program to diversify New Jersey’s LGBT rights movement.   Garden State Equality has 11 Caucuses, each of which serves a different demographic community and has a large and active membership.   Communities of color and other constituencies have praised Garden State Equality’s Caucus program as a pioneering national model.   Here are Garden State Equality’s 11 Caucuses, which you can email by clicking on their respective links:

Garden State Equality African-American Caucus

Garden State Equality Catholic Caucus

Garden State Equality’s Children’s Caucus

Garden State Equality Couples Caucus

Garden State Equality Clergy Caucus

Garden State Equality Corporate and Professional Caucus

Garden State Equality Labor Caucus

Garden State Equality Latino and Latina Caucus

Garden State Equality Real Estate Caucus

Garden State Equality Women’s Caucus

Garden State Equality Youth Caucus

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.  In 2005, Garden State Equality ran the first television commercial in American history on trangender civil rights. The commercial aired as part of our campaign to pass a statewide transgender equality law. That law passed both houses of the New Jersey legislature by a combined vote of 102 to 8, the largest margin of victory for a transgender bill anywhere in America to this day. Later that legislative session, the legislature passed a transgender-inclusive anti-hate crimes law by a combined vote of 100 to 10.   

The Garden State Equality political organization, independent from the Garden State Equality educational organization, has run the most ambitious LGBT 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.  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.