Camp Equality Fort Lauderdale - Great Success!

by Steve Bard

Members of Florida Red and Blue, the Dolphin Democrats, Equality Florida, Fairness for All Families, the ACLU, Palm Beach Community College, HRC, local and state candidate and concerned citizens gathered on May 10th and 11th at the Marriott on Cypress Creek Road, in Fort Lauderdale to participate in the nation’s first Camp Equality presented by the National Offices of the Human Right Campaign. The purpose the 15 hour weekend was to learn how to recruit volunteers, run campaigns, and work on grassroots participation in elections and ballot initiatives. There were over 50 people in attendance.

Besides the obvious presidential, congressional, state and local elections, a prime interest was and is the defeat of the ballot initiative of Amendment 2. This mean spirited amendment crafted by the Save Florida Marriage, if passed, will place into the Constitution language which will only recognize a marriage between one man and one woman and will destroy all domestic partnerships, and any other unions not described as a legal marriage. It will in particular disengage the combined health care benefits of the elderly. In the 2006 Florida census, 360,000 families described themselves as in co-habitation relationships; of that, only 40,000 were identified as same-sex. This is not an amendment for anti-gay marriage; it is a bill designed to eliminate civil and personal rights of a targeted Florida population.We are all challenged to educate our gay and straight friends, families, and gay allies to say NO 2.

The weekend started out by hitting the ground running. This was not a social affair of any sorts. The HRC staff brought campaign professionals to us and they meant business. Received Resource Manual but the following lectures were not from the manual. We will receive the power point presentations later in the week. There were lectures, exercises, round table discussions and pilot planning of the defeat of Amendment 2 and the elections of fair minded local, state and federal representatives. Most of the educators were professional campaigners and had run many successful state and federal races.They provided the knowledge – we provided the enthusiasm.

The weekend ended by making all of the participants being given the designation of Equality Campers. Our next objective is to assist in campaigns toward the November elections. There will be 11 other Equality Camps in the next two months. Fort Lauderdale was the first – the Equality Camps Flagship.