How Different Users Can Get the Most Out of This Resource

Here are some tips on how different users can get the most out of this material.

Campaign Organizers
If you are going to start a campaign, or be an overall campaign organizer (rather than just do a particular job), you should probably read through much of this resource (depending on which kind of law you are trying to pass) before you start. You may want to do that even if you are going to work on particular part of the campaign, to get an overview. Since so many different aspects of a campaign are connected to each other, you’ll need to go through all of the general material and all of the material on your specific kind of campaign to get a good idea of what a campaign looks like and what you’ll need to do to put one together. As you get organized and launch your campaign, you’ll be able to refer to sections covering particular issues to help you with problems as they come up.

Although this guide was specifically designed for campaigns working to secure civil rights policies protecting LGBT people, most of the first few sections on how to organize and run a campaign should work for any kind of policy.

People Doing Particular Jobs
If you are going to be working on just one aspect of a campaign, you probably don’t need to read through the whole guide. The index should show which sections are most likely to be helpful to people who are:

• handling grass roots organizing
• lobbying
• organizing in the LGBT community
• organizing support outside the LGBT community
• handling media and public relations
• giving legal advice
• getting witnesses or other support for your arguments
• dealing with the opposition
• handling volunteers

Some Special Words

This guide uses some general words to cover many similar but slightly different things. Here is a list of some of the most important words you’ll need to know.

“Board” means any person or group of people who has the power to adopt a policy. It could be a town council, a legislature, university trustees, a business board of directors, etc. It could also be an individual, like a university or a corporate president.

“Campaign” means any organized effort to get a board to adopt a policy. It could include an election campaign for a referendum or an initiative, although most of the time that is not what it means.

“Constituency” refers to any group of people whose interests are represented by the board, such as voters, stockholders, the legislature, etc.

“Policy” means a rule which either says that LGBT people cannot be discriminated against (a “civil rights” policy) or which recognizes some form of domestic partnership (a “domestic partnership” policy). The rule could be a law adopted by a government or a policy adopted by an institution. Laws adopted by cities and counties are usually called “ordinances.”

“Civil Rights Policy” means any policy which says that something can’t be done to a person because of her or his sexual orientation, or gender identity, depending on the type of policy. It includes rules about job discrimination, housing discrimination, and discrimination by businesses, government and educational institutions. These are also sometimes called “nondiscrimination” or “antidiscrimination” policies.

“Domestic Partnership Policy” means any policy which recognizes couples in committed relationships who are not married. It includes simple registration systems in which people document their relationships, employment benefit plans, and any policy, like a hospital or jail visitation policy, which tries to recognize nonmarital relationships.