MARRIAGE EQUALITY USA
Marriage Equality USA, is an all-volunteer, national non-profit organization whose mission is to secure legally recognized civil marriage equality for all, at the federal and state level, without regard to gender identity or sexual orientation.

Marriage Equality, Inc. began as an idea in 1996 with a handful of activists believing that same-sex couples should have the freedom and the right to civil marriage, and angry that the federal government wanted to pass a law barring LGBT people from this right. The organization was officially founded and formed February 12, 1998, on National Freedom To Marry Day. The New York chapter became so successful that activists in Los Angeles Oakland and San Francisco California, responding to that state's 2000 anti-marriage referendum, began Marriage Equality California.

In the late autumn of 2000, the national organization, Marriage Equality USA was officially founded. Since then other chapters have formed across the country and are chapters are growing every day. The organization's sole purpose and focus is to end discrimination in civil marriage so that same-sex couples can enjoy the same legal and societal status as opposite-sex couples.

Marriage Equality USA (MEUSA) understands how critical it is for a greater number of voices to be heard and often works in tandem with other state and national organizations. With greater numbers of people working together towards ending discrimination in civil marriage, MEUSA hopes to accomplish in the foreseeable future what truly is the inevitable. civil marriages for same-sex couples.

Polls today tell us that 40 percent of the U.S. public approves of the basic civil right for gay people to marry. With the help of committed individuals and organizations, we are confident that that percentage will continue to grow. Only then can we shape the kind of social climate that will change public opinion embolden our courts to make fair decisions in winning the freedom to marry.

For more information, visit their website at www.marriageequality.org.

GARDEN STATE EQUALITY
New Jersey's LGBT-rights advocacy organization, Garden State Equality was founded in 2004. Since then, it has enacted 200 LGBT civil rights laws at the state, county and municipal levels. The laws include 12 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. www.gardenstateequality.org.