Oakland, Calif. ? The director of the country’s leading grass-roots gay and lesbian coalition rallied nearly 2,000 activists at a national conference here Friday in preparation for a bruising battle over same-sex marriage and domestic partner benefits on California’s 2006 state ballot.

Flashing a grim map of defeats on the gay marriage front in the past two elections, most recently the sweeping passage Tuesday of a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage in Texas, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force executive director Matt Foreman cast the coming fight as one of basic equal rights.

“It’s time to stop running away from the moral values issue and seize it and go on the offensive,” he said to rousing applause. “Let’s start by claiming our moral values – liberty and personal freedom for all.”

Behind the scenes, a coalition that includes the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the United Farm Workers, more than 250 clergy, and dozens of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender organizations has begun the door-to-door campaigning and street corner canvassing to take the gay and lesbian equal rights message to neighbors, churches, PTA meetings and backyard barbecues across California.

They are countering a multi-pronged effort to bring at least two ballot measures to voters next year. The initiatives would amend the state constitution to limit marriage to one man and one woman while undoing many of California’s recently granted domestic partner rights and obligations on issues of property, custody, health care and more.

In California, the ProtectMarriage.com coalition, supported by the national Focus on the Family and Family Research Council, has submitted 200,000 signatures and has 300,000 more petitions in circulation to qualify its measure for the ballot by Dec. 27. The group needs 598,000 signatures to qualify the measure.

“We are very pleased with the grass-roots efforts of churches and organizations in terms of getting the message out,” said California Family Council executive director Richard Prentice, whose group is behind the measure.

The competing VoteYesMarriage.com, endorsed by the Rev. Louis Sheldon’s Traditional Values Coalition and others, last month reworded its measure and will begin a massive signature gathering effort next month to qualify by March.

That measure’s creator, Randy Thomasson of the Coalition for Children and Families, has called same-sex marriage unnatural and damaging to children.

His group’s most recent initiative would bar existing government benefits to gay and lesbian couples that resemble marriage benefits and are granted through the domestic partner registry. It would forbid government from requiring private entities to offer any such rights normally bestowed by marriage – reversing existing law.