What Every Activist Can Learn From Scrappy Gay Marriage Advocates

The movement for gay marriage is one of the most successful issue campaigns of the last several decades, having convinced the American public—and the Supreme Court—that an issue once considered ridiculous was a matter of basic rights.

So it’s no wonder that a lot of causes, particularly on the left, now want to copy the effort.

“What I’m finding is that there is a real hunger to put one foot ahead of the other on progressive causes,” says Marc Solomon, the national campaign director for Freedom to Marry, one of the leading groups pushing for gay marriage. (Now that the Supreme Court has made gay marriage legal across the country, the organization is winding down and will disband later this year.)