Making Sense of the Election--and After: EDGE Talks to HRC's Joe Solmonese

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." Most people don't remember that Dickens ended that long opening paragraph by ironically commenting that it was "a time very much like our own."

In other words, every age combines the very, very good and the very, very bad in its own fashion. So it was with the election of 2008. We got Barak Obama as president. The Democrats won several important congressional races. We defeated some of our worst enemies (such as Colorado's Maria Musgrave).

But we also lost four important battles. The most notable was in California, but Arkansas voters opted to keep children in the limbo of government shelters rather than risk letting them into a loving gay couple's home. And Florida and Arizona enshrined discrimination in their state constitutions.

In the forefront of the battles this fall was the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest LGBT organization. HRC's head, Joe Solmonese, sat down for a one-on-one with EDGE to discuss the election, the aftermath, and what's ahead for our movement.

EDGE: Make some sense of this, please!

JOE SOLMONESE: It's hard right now to put everything in context. It was a very bitterwsweet election. We're enormously excited about the election of Sen. Obama and gains in the House and Senate but there's no denying that, just as we're making some progress, in California, the courts ruled in favor of marriage and the voters took it away.

EDGE: We did win in Connecticut, though, where voters voted down a constitutional convention that would have convened solely for the purpose of disallowing marriage.

JS: My instinct is that you have to put things in context. One door closes, another opens. You still have to recognize the real, genuine pain in California--and to work through that with people. We can't just say, "Here's the bright side, at least there's Connecticut"; but rather, give all people an outlet for this anger and pain. And take a deep and thoughtful breath.

EDGE: What about the blame game? People are pointing fingers at black voters and the Mormon Church.

JS: Our problem is much more grounded in religious-based bigotry [than in blaming black voters]. The Mormon Church fueled and funded vast amount of resources for the fight for Proposition 8.

EDGE: What about outreach to blacks and Hispanics.

JS: 'Outreach' may not be enough. There's got to be outreach coupled with a real desire to find our common humanity. That may sound a little lofty. Cultural and religious-based differences exist. This conversation can't start with outreach. We need to move past our differences.

The answer is to work up the pipeline of elected offices from local to the federal level. That's why the Victory Fund is doing such great work. We're not only looking to elect our allies to office but are filling up a pipeline. There are a record number of women taking office because they moved up through that pipeline. That should be our model.

Through the heartbreak of California, one of the consequences of election cycle is that LGBT people moved up as never before. Not only officials, but 'get out of the vote' campaigns and manning phonebanks with non-LGBT people was done in an inspiring way.

EDGE: When Obama takes office, what's your wish list for his administration?

JS: First, there's what we're doing right now. Where do we stand on 'Don't Ask Don't Tell,' [DADT] on the hate crimes bill. There was a partisan shift in Congress, true, but not necessarily on our issues. Mark Warner, for example, replaced John Warner in Virginia, but that was no net pick-up for hate crimes, because he [John Warner] supported it.

DADT won't go away overnight. It might be a three-year plan, to gain support in support in Congress, working with the military. Someone in the community might ask whether DADT is more important than something else

EDGE: Some are asking if the courts are the way to go to achieve our goals.

JS: In the history of civil rights advances in this country, the country wasn't always ready. But if we had to wait for social change, it would never happen. Are we ever ready for monumental civil rights change? Massachusetts was the spark, and we've won there. There have been gains and losses ever since. Maybe more losses than gains, but the courts have been instrumental in our struggle.

EDGE: Is there light at the end of the tunnel.

JS: Yes! It started in Massachusetts in 2004 and ended in ... when? 2018? Maybe ultimately, in 2017. I feel we're right in the middle of the move toward marriage equality. I do see the court decision in Massachusetts as the first spark for social change.

James Clyburn, the Democratic whip I the House tells me, we look back at the '60s as a time of social change. But if you lived through it, were in meetings with Dr. Martin Luther King, were marching in Selma, there was all sorts of turmoil and unrest He said, 'That's where you are now.' We think of the entire time in the '60s. But at the time, it was hard to sort it out. Like now.

Out of the heartbreak of defeat in California, we will overcome the inherent hurdles of religious-based bigotry in Mormon Church and elsewhere. If this manifests itself as new enemy on a much deeper level, this is something we'll just have to deal with. Personally, I the Mormons overplayed their hand.