Book Captures Legislative Effort of Marriage Fight

A third major book on the marriage equality fight has hit bookstores this year, but unlike the previous two, which focused on California's efforts to undo Proposition 8, this one looks at the behind the scenes efforts of political leaders and grassroots activists to pass same-sex marriage laws in state Legislatures and the ballot fights in Maine, Minnesota, and Washington state.

"Winning Marriage," by Freedom to Marry national campaign director Marc Solomon, offers few surprises for those who have closely followed marriage equality efforts across the country. But it does contain plenty of insight and lots of strategies that activists and others can use in future equality battles.

Solomon is also not your usual activist. In fact, one of the first things readers learn is that he used to be a Republican and didn't come out as gay until he was 30.

"My path to becoming an activist for the freedom to marry was anything but a direct one," he writes.

He noted that while he was raised in a liberal political household in Kansas City, Missouri, he turned to the right in part because of the recognition that he was gay and "desperately didn't want to be."

He tried therapy and dating women before accepting and embracing his sexuality.

"I've been gay for awhile," Solomon, 48, quipped in a recent phone interview when talking about his background.

Solomon said that he's been working on the book for years -- ever since marriage equality became legal in Massachusetts in 2004 -- but at that time publishers didn't have a lot of interest in the story about a single state.

"The story had never been told," Solomon explained, adding that interest picked up after the successful legislative effort in New York state in 2011.

"Initially it was Massachusetts and New York, then stuff kept happening," Solomon said, explaining that he ended his book with last year's U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Defense of Marriage Act, in which a key provision was ruled unconstitutional. That decision opened the floodgates to numerous court decisions striking down state marriage bans in the last year and a half, bringing same-sex marriage to 35 states, plus Washington, D.C., and St. Louis, Missouri, according to Freedom to Marry.

Solomon may be familiar to readers as he worked for Equality California from 2009-2010 after the passage of Prop 8, the state's same-sex marriage ban. He left the job after the federal lawsuit challenging Prop 8 went to trial and was ruled unconstitutional, setting up its path to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in June 2013 on a technicality that Prop 8 was invalid; same-sex marriages resumed in the Golden State a few days later.

"I had come out to California to get ready to bring back [a ballot measure] to undo Prop 8," Solomon told the Bay Area Reporter. "But it was very clear from a volunteer perspective and a donor perspective that people wanted to see the lawsuit work out."

New York

The push for same-sex marriage in New York got off to a disastrous start when the Democratic-controlled state Senate torpedoed a bill 38-24 in 2009, Solomon noted. Gay rights advocates were shocked that some of the Democratic senators that had won office with help from gay donors and promised to get the bill passed did not deliver the votes, Solomon said in his book. (The state Assembly had no trouble passing the law; winning passage came down to the Senate.)

Out of that loss, however, came a strategic campaign by gay grassroots activists and others, who founded Fight Back New York, which raised $800,000 and targeted specific lawmakers who had voted against the marriage bill. The group was successful, replacing three anti-equality Senate incumbents -- two Democrats and one Republican -- with senators who had committed to vote yes on marriage, Solomon writes.

"And if they broke that promise?" Solomon writes. "Well, the buzz in Albany was clear: Democrat or Republican, the gays will not only stick by their friends but also take out vulnerable legislators who vote against equality."

"It was a great tactic," Solomon told the B.A.R. "When politicians take our support for granted that's not a good thing."

He added that the New York effort was carefully targeted and that was also a key. In contrast, the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage "walked around for several years and made big threats, but never acted" in terms of targeting lawmakers who favored marriage equality, Solomon said.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who was elected in 2010, began to champion a marriage equality bill after talking to Rob Coburn, a gay friend, Solomon writes.

By 2011, Solomon was hired by Evan Wolfson at Freedom to Marry. He arrived in New York in early April, just in time to start working on the legislative push to bring same-sex marriage to New York.

Solomon credits the governor with helping get the law passed.

"Governor Cuomo deserves huge, huge amounts of credit," Solomon said. "He willed it to be."

Indeed, Solomon's book details the rough and tumble world of New York politics, the arm-twisting by Cuomo, and last-minute stalls that almost derailed the bill on the last day of the legislative session. The governor met with the advocates, including Solomon, and demanded that they have a single, united plan for securing a legislative victory, including raising about $1.5 million for television ads, and an aggressive media strategy that saw countless stories about various aspects of marriage equality published in a variety of outlets.

Freedom to Marry and others reached out to Republican donors and strategists, including Ken Mehlman, the onetime Republican National Committee chair and campaign manager of the 2004 Bush-Cheney re-election campaign.

Solomon said that while the strategy ultimately paid off -- New York's marriage bill passed in June 2011 -- there were warning signs at times.

"There were red flags for me," he said. "Elected officials are focused on their own reputations and credibility. If it fell apart, there would be questions."

Maine

A year later, Solomon was off helping win marriage equality at the ballot box in Maine. In November 2012, Maine was one of four states with marriage initiatives on the ballot. In two of those states -- Washington and Maryland -- voters were deciding on referendums after legislators passed same-sex marriage bills. In Minnesota, there was an effort to ban marriage (it failed). But in Maine gay rights leaders went to the ballot with an affirmative measure to legalize same-sex marriage, after a narrow defeat in 2009.

One of the things that Freedom to Marry had done in the interim was research -- lots of it. It wanted to study focus group reports and polling to determine messaging. One of the things that Freedom to Marry discovered was that people were using the wrong messages, like in California during the Prop 8 campaign, when the ads mostly talked about rights and benefits.

"Yet for the vast majority of both straight and gay people, rights and benefits weren't why they got married," Solomon writes. "It was out of deep and abiding love and commitment and a desire to profess that love and commitment in front of family and friends and have it respected by their state."

The Maine campaign utilized actual gay and lesbian people in its ads (something the No on 8 campaign did not do) talking with their parents or family members. The Maine campaign, run by Matt McTighe, also realized from previous research that criticizing opponents -- calling them homophobic or extremist -- was not effective. And the campaign was finally able to aggressively respond to the "harms kids" narrative that marriage equality opponents used to great effect in previous campaigns.

This time, the pro-marriage equality side responded with ads featuring parents of older kids talking about how "values are taught at home and that the values they wanted their kids to have are those of the Golden Rule, treating others the way they wanted to be treated," Solomon writes. "This wasn't a head-on response, but it was what tested as most effective. It reminded parents that they don't have to worry about the schools because they, the parents, are the ones who impart values to their children."

And the Maine ballot fight even included a last-minute incident right before voters headed to the polls. For its Diversity Day, a middle school outside of Portland had invited Proud Rainbow Youth of Southern Maine to talk to students about homophobia. During the question and answer session, Solomon writes, one of the presenters asked if, in sex education courses, the kids were being taught about safe gay sex. A parent went to the media to complain, and the Protect Marriage Maine campaign seized on the episode. But while the incident did generate some media coverage, the pro-marriage side pushed back with statements that the classroom discussion wasn't about marriage, Solomon writes. In the end, Mainers voted for marriage equality 53 to 47 percent.

Up Next

Solomon said that he sees more Republicans coming around to support marriage equality. Freedom to Marry has established the Young Conservatives for Freedom to Marry group, made up mostly of people under 45, including "veterans of the [John] McCain and [Mitt] Romney campaigns -- people who will be leaders in 10-15 years," he said.

In last month's midterm elections, Solomon noted that Republican governors who were up for re-election "wanted to avoid" the same-sex marriage issue "at all costs." Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who beat back a challenger, "basically said nothing," Solomon said, following the resolution of a lawsuit in favor of same-sex marriage that took place in the midst of the campaign.

Solomon sees a shift happening in the country, and said that those who consider themselves independents now support marriage equality by more than 60 percent.

Marc Solomon's book launch party takes place December 12 from 7 to 10 p.m. at Zinc Details, 1905 Fillmore Street. To RSVP, email [email protected]