Supreme Court, brought national resolution to the cause. But a smart, strategic campaign was integral to creating the climate necessary to get to that point and to avoid seeing gains snatched away. As in Hawaii (and even the earliest rounds of the marriage battle in the 1970s), litigation was central – but it wasn't enough. Wolfson called for the creation of a campaign that reflected what he called the "4 multi's": it would be multi-year (not expected to win overnight), multi-state (not watching as victories were picked off one by one), multi-partner (no one organization could do it all), and multi-methodology (it would combine litigation, lobbying, public education, organization, direct action, fund-raising, and even, eventually, electoral). Wolfson knew that marriage advocates didn't have to win every state, but they had to win enough states – and not every American had to be persuaded to support the freedom to marry, but enough Americans needed to be supportive before elected officials and judges, including the justices of the Supreme Court, would do the right thing. Over two decades, the marriage movement built from only 27% support among the American people in 1993 to 63% in 2015; and from 0 states issuing marriage licenses in 2002 to 37 states and the District of Columbia in 2015, when the victories created the powerful momentum and energy that enabled the Supreme Court Justices to finish the job and strike down marriage discrimination once and for all. Areas of work Messaging Beginning in 2010, Freedom to Marry created and coordinated a research collaborative, dubbed the Marriage Research Consortium, drawing together state and national partners such as the Movement Advancement Project, Basic Rights Oregon, and Third Way to "crack the code" on how to reach the next segment of the American public who were not yet part of the majority the campaign had achieved. Through cutting-edge research, focus groups, collaboration with the partners, and compilation of the experience gained in multiple campaigns (and losses), Freedom to Marry pioneered a new messaging playbook for the marriage movement called "Why Marriage Matters". The playbook shifted from a previous focus on the rights and benefits that come with marriage towards values-based frames of love, commitment, freedom, family, and the Golden Rule. These were the messages that caused "middle" voters – those who Wolfson called the "reachable but not yet reached"—to move towards support, and helped contribute to the historic first