Posted on 02/20/2004 12:12:05 PM PST by MegaSilver
Mayor Gavin Newsom, the man behind San Francisco's week-old policy allowing same-sex marriages, sported a wide grin.
Opponents of the policy had fared poorly in the courts, and the line of gay and lesbian couples waiting for marriage licenses at City Hall remained long and boisterous.
Beneath the smile Wednesday, the mayor, 42 days into his job, was feeling the weight of his decision to place the city and his young career at the center of a heated national debate.
In Washington, President George W. Bush told reporters that he was troubled by what I've seen in San Francisco. Some of Newsom's supporters were worried that he had veered off course. Even some same-sex couples in line for marriage licenses questioned Newsom's motives.
For Newsom, a millionaire businessman who was branded the conservative candidate in the city's mayoral election last fall an opponent's campaign posters featured Newsom with Bush and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger this was a road no one had imagined.
"Most politicians don't get away with doing the right thing at a time when society is not necessarily unanimously ready for that," Newsom, a Democrat, said in an interview.
The new marriage policy was such uncharted territory that Newsom had not even told his wife, the television commentator Kimberly Guilfoyle Newsom, until he had set it in motion. And in addition to deflecting the predictable outrage of people like Reverend Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition, Newsom said he faced surprisingly icy reactions from some members of his own Irish Catholic family.
"I did it because I thought it was right," he said, "and those are the easiest decisions, and the toughest political decisions." "Easiest decisions because you just know it is the right thing, but the politics of it: My God, how do I explain this to family member X?" "How do I explain this to the person who married my wife and I in one of the most traditional Catholic weddings two years ago?"
During the interview in his City Hall office, Newsom, 36, stood by the decision to recognize same-sex marriages, passionately describing his motives as "pure and principled and grounded in guarantees of equality in the state's Constitution." But he also promised to step down on his new policy if the courts ruled against it, saying his main objective of putting a human face on the gay marriage debate nationwide had been achieved.
I just say to the president, Newsom said, '"Come out and meet with the three-plus thousand couples that have committed themselves to one another, committed to a long-term, loving relationship with equal status, the same status that he and his wife are afforded. And recognize the spirit and the pride that comes with that.'"
For conservative critics of his stance, especially those who have made Newsom a prime target of their wrath against gays, Newsom said he "wore their enmity as a code of distinction."
"That is an honor that I am happy to accept," he said. "I mean that sincerely. I have been befuddled by conservatives who talk about taking away rights, yet they claim to be conservatives. The hypocrisy to me is extraordinarily grand."
Though Newsom long ago said he favored gay marriage, the topic was not a major issue in the mayoral election or during his two terms as a county supervisor. Before Newsom became mayor, his career was most distinguished by his efforts to crack down on the city's homeless problem, something that endeared him to the business community and helped secure his victory in a tight nonpartisan runoff election against a candidate from the Green Party.
Newsom still says that homelessness is one of his major passions, saying a day does not go by when he does not devote some time to it. He raised a thick black binder on the corner of his desk marked homeless as evidence and promised some new policy initiatives were in the works.
He has also spent many of his first days in office shaking up city government in other ways. He appointed the first female fire chief and dragged several department heads to a rundown housing project and demanded explanations for its disrepair.
He rankled some police officers by showing up unannounced at murder scenes. And he recently agreed to a budget request to purchase automated sidewalk cleaners only after insisting on testing one himself.
"We had a great first month," he said.
But less than two weeks after his inauguration on Jan. 8, Newsom found himself sidetracked by what quickly became the defining issue of his career so far. It began with an invitation from Representative Nancy Pelosi, a longtime family friend who represents the San Francisco area, to attend Bush's State of the Union address.
It was there, sitting in Washington, that Newsom heard Bush speak against same-sex marriages.
"I was there and I just was scratching my head, saying this was not the world that I grew up aspiring to live in, that he was talking about," Newsom said. "I just found some of the words quite divisive."
"I respect that good people disagree on this topic, but you know, I didn't think he needed to use the State of the Union to be so divisive."
When Newsom got back to San Francisco, he said he read the court decisions authorizing gay marriage in Massachusetts as well as the U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year on sodomy. As he mulled over them and Bush's comments, he said, he became convinced that he had a moral obligation to open the doors to same-sex marriages in San Francisco.
And unlike many other big-city mayors, he had the ability to do so because San Francisco is both a city and a county, and in California, marriage licenses are a county responsibility.
"He is president of the United States, and I am just a guy who does stop signs and tries to revitalize parks," Newsom said. "I know my role. But I also know that I've got an obligation that I took seriously to defend the Constitution. There is simply no provision that allows me to discriminate."
But Newsom acknowledged it was a difficult path from that realization to the first same-sex wedding ceremony last Thursday. He said that some of his advisers strongly recommended against the new policy because of the political fallout.
With business acumen, money, good looks and friends in the right places, Newsom has been touted by many Democrats as a rising star in state politics. Some people suggested he wait and let the courts tackle the issue, as happened in Massachusetts. But Newsom said he had no patience for a long court battle.
"It was an easy argument I imagine between 1948 and 1967 when we all waited around for the courts of this country to recognize interracial marriages," Newsom said. "There are certain principles in life that transcend patience, and one of them to me is the obligation not to discriminate against people."
It was not long, Newsom said, before his entire staff was on board.
Soon the excitement unleashed downstairs swept the second-floor mayor's office, so much so that on Friday Newsom broke his rule of not making this about me and officiated at two same-sex weddings for people who worked for him.
"I think it is going to be a very rocky road," Newsom said. "I think at the end of the day people will say he didn't need to do that. And boy look what he sacrificed to do that. Look what he could have done. Look at what some will say he should have done. I know that."
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Now let's go down to the bath houses and show the other face.
These "newly" married homosexual couples will then go back to their communities and demand that local agencies, state agencies, private business and charitable organizations recognize their marriage certificates as legal...
Since the "certificates" were obtained using illegally altered marriage applications (an official state document), I'd say that the local and state agencies, private business, and charitable organizations in other communities could refuse to accept San Francisco's document without fear of reprisal. Of course this IS California...
Wrong Form May Invalidate Calif Same-Sex Marriages
"There is a statewide form that every county has to use for marriage applications. If we receive application forms that are different from the single form used throughout the state, we will not accept them," said Nicole Kasabian Evans, a spokeswoman for the Health and Human Services Agency...
Evans said her agency, which processes all state marriage license applications that become state records, would return the forms if the city sent them in...
Nancy Lafaro, director of the San Francisco County Clerk's office, said the marriage license applications gay and lesbian couples in San Francisco have filled out since last Thursday were changed. "For example, instead of saying bride or groom, the form in San Francisco says applicant one and applicant two," she said...
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