Just over 10 years ago, no state allowed same-sex couples to marry, support for marriage equality nationwide hovered below 40 percent, and politicians everywhere thought if they touched on the controversial topic, their political career would be dead. Today, with Supreme Court action recently expanding the freedom to marry to 35 states, nearly 60 percent of Americans are in support. Democrats use the issue to their advantage, and a bipartisan array of judges — 42 out of 44 at latest count — have ruled that marriage discrimination violates the U.S. Constitution.
Kansas City native Marc Solomon has been on the front lines of this fight to win and protect marriage for same-sex couples, having worked on the cause full-time since 2004. The author of "Winning Marriage: The Inside Story on How Same-Sex Couple Took on the Politicians and Pundits — and Won." (ForeEdge, November 2014), Solomon will be here promoting the book from 5:30 to 8 p.m. Monday, Nov. 24, at Westport Flea Market, 817 Westport Road, Kansas City, Mo. It is free and open to the public. Solomon will sign books/have books for sale.
Solomon is national campaign director for Freedom to Marry, which slate.com describes as "the visionary gay rights group that forced marriage to the front of the debate." Solomon directs all the organization’s programs to win marriage nationwide. In 13 years of work on marriage, he has led the campaign to protect marriage in Massachusetts and played leading roles in several states including New York, Illinois, California, Washington, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Maine. He has initiated programs to make advances with both the Democratic and Republican parties and has led efforts to enlist elected officials and business leaders to the cause. He is a regular media spokesperson on local and national television, radio and in print, and is quoted frequently by a variety of media including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico and The Associated Press.
In a recent interview, he said there are a few reasons he chose to write the book. The main reason is because he believes the fight for marriage rights is "a really powerful story to tell."
"It’s really a story of how we as an advocacy movement got to where we are today. It takes you into the governors’ offices and into the White House and into the courtroom and it’s really an inside story of how this happened," he explained.
"I wanted to tell the story because I think we have, through a lot of trial and error, something really powerful to show to other social movements about how to leverage power in America and win."
Solomon counts Kansas as one of the 35 states in the marriage equality column. However Missouri is not
"Gay couples will be able to marry permanently in Kansas soon. Missouri is still unfolding. Couples can marry in St. Louis and Kansas City right now but it’s still not a permanent state-wide resolution in Missouri yet," he said on Monday, before the U.S. Supreme Court. Justice Sonia Sotomayor temporarily blocked gay marriage in Kansas a day before it was due to go into effect.
Solomon said response to the book has been great.
"People are feeling good about the book because it tells their stories. The reviewer from Slate called it a people’s history of the marriage movement and I think in some ways that’s what it is. It’s not simply a story of a lawsuit or a story of a leader. It’s the story of a movement," said Solomon, who ironically is not married himself.
The author is the son of architect Mel Solomon and the late Linda Zackler Solomon. He attended the Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy from kindergarten through eighth-grade and then attended The Barstow School, where he graduated in 1985.
While he was growing up the Solomon family belonged to Congregation Beth Shalom, where he became a Bar Mitzvah and was confirmed. Today, he said if he had to label his Judaism, he would consider himself Reform. He believes his Jewish values have definitely played a role in his professional life. He pointed out a quote he used in the beginning of the book by Theodor Herzl, the visionary behind modern Zionism, "If you will it, it is no dream."
"Herzl had a powerful vision of what a better world could look like, one that most everyone thought was impossible. But he drove hard and built a movement to bring it about. It’s a powerful lesson about social change, and one that has been instructive to our cause."
As with many members of the Jewish community, he has enthusiastically pursued the practice of tikkun olam, trying to improve the world.
"I’ve found that in my work, beyond the LGBT community, the community that is most passionate about our cause is the Jewish community and I think it’s because Jews as well were strangers in a strange land and can identify with and empathize with the fight of gay and lesbian people to be treated as equal citizens," he explained.
He continued by saying, "One of the things people say about gay and lesbian people is it’s something you can hide if you want, you can be in the closet. In some ways that’s the same for Jews. You don’t have to publicly identify, you can change your name. I think it’s a notion of being comfortable with being who you are and being treated equally as you are in America, and I think that notion resonates especially strongly with Jews who have been through the experience seeking to be treated equally and also being who we are as Jews."
Solomon knows the book will appeal to those who have been involved in the fight for marriage equality or who want to learn more about it. He hopes it will appeal to others as well.
"I think it appeals to people who watch shows like Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews because it gives a real blow-by-blow insider’s account about how the fight has been won, from how we’ve pressured Obama to how Governor Cuomo in New York drove through marriage legislation and how the Supreme Court has dealt with the issue. So I think people who are political junkies will like it. I also think people who are involved in other social movements, whether it’s gun safety or income inequality or climate change, will find lessons that hopefully they can apply to the causes that they are fighting for in the book," he said.
He’s really looking forward to discussing the book in Kansas City and "celebrating with lots and lots of old friends."
"Part of the fun of the book tour is the chance to reconnect with so many people from so many different spheres of life — Barstow friends, Academy friends. One of the great things about the Academy experience is the friendships that I made there. The people who were my classmates at the Academy have been extraordinarily helpful with the book tour. Jeff Sosland, Jordan Zeldin, Molly Shapiro, Ellie Klausner and Julie Fingersh are all helping with getting word out in their communities in D.C., Chicago, Seattle, L.A., and, San Francisco," he said.
"It’s really gratifying that these friendships are still such a key part of my own life even as I been through a lot of personal changes — coming out of the closet and being a gay activist over the course of my life, that wasn’t the path that I was schooled to be on at the Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy. ... But my friends are great advocates, super supportive and involved and that means a lot to me."