In early 2004, when gay activists were fighting tooth and nail to prevent the legislature from sending Amendment 1 to voters, opening the door to a possible statewide ban on marriage for gay couples, Kathy Kelly decided she’d had enough.

Familiar with the political arena and well educated on gay rights issues, Kelly saw the pending ban as an attack on her eight-year partnership with Lisa Doyle Kelly, and an opportunity to fight back.

“It’s dangerous,” Kelly says of the ban. “For me, it’s kind of the primitive idea of protecting my family. I feel like it’s really important to do that.”

Kelly took her activism to a new level. She quit her steady job as a social worker at AID Atlanta to create Marriage Equality Georgia, or MEGA, through which she fought what she saw as an attack on gay families.

Georgia voters overwhelmingly approved the amendment to ban marriages between same-sex couples, taking some 76 percent of the vote. The fate of the ban now rests in court, where Fulton Superior Court Judge Constance Russell is expected to rule soon on a challenge to the amendment.

Kelly says that even though the decision wasn’t final after the November 2004 vote, she took notes and re-envisioned MEGA with a broader focus.

The MEGA Family Project was primarily molded to educate straight Georgians on the discrimination gay couples face, but Kelly found that gay men and lesbians had lessons to learn as well.

“We really don’t think about the discrimination we face on a daily basis,” Kelly says. “We’ve just taken it as a part of our lives and people learn to put up with it.

“Before we go out into the rest of the world and to straight Georgians, we need to build our own community,” she adds.

The fight against Amendment 1 is not over, as Kelly is quick to point out. She says she hopes Russell’s delayed decision is a good sign, and that the fight is still “winnable.”

If the amendment is struck down, Kelly says she hopes the legislature will consider allowing civil unions between gay partners as a step in the greater scheme of marriage equality. But civil unions are far from the justice Kelly ultimately wants.

“It’s a separate institution, and it’s second class,” she says. “It would only offer state benefits, and we want federal benefits to gain equality. If we have civil unions in Georgia like they have in Connecticut, they don’t carry over state to state. We have to get marriage equality.”

THE FUTURE OF MEGA under Kelly’s leadership looks strong, according to Tim Cairl, president of the MEGA board. A non-profit consultant, Cairl cites the work Kelly did to bring other organizations together for the same cause.

“I would like to see us be a very strong partner for other advocacy organizations that at are working for human rights on any scale, whether it’s a small, local community focus or statewide focus,” Cairl says. “We do that to some extent now, but I’d like to continue that coalition and alliance building.”

Amid talk that MEGA Family Project is “competing” with Georgia Equality, Kelly says there’s enough work to go around for gay rights organizations to coexist.

“A lot of people feel like there needs to be one or the other, but there is so much work to be done, two organizations is fine,” Kelly says. “The more the better.”

FROM HER TINY home office in a quiet Decatur neighborhood, Kelly works 80 hours a week fundraising, writing grants, creating programming and building her organization, which grew to encompass 3,000 members statewide. Her salary is about $12,000, a steep cut from the nearly $36,000 she earned at AID Atlanta.

Doyle Kelly says her wife’s departure from the nine-to-five world was a challenge in the beginning, but she does not regret the decision and is proud of her partner.

“We knew it’s what she wanted, and we knew it was right, especially in the political environment we faced,” Doyle Kelly says. “She’s doing a fantastic job. She’s a mother, a wife and a fulltime activist, and I don’t know how she does it.”

Kelly says her daughter Maggie, who will be one-year old next month, gives her the inspiration to keep fighting.

“When I look down and look at my daughter and see her smiling, it keeps me going,” Kelly says. “There are days when I get off a horrible conference call, I look down at her and any doubt is taken away. I want to raise my daughter in a better world.”