As the country races to the inevitable day when marriage equality is the law of the land, most of the focus has been on the plaintiffs and celebrity lawyers who have led the legal challenge to marriage bans. Lost in the shuffle has been the man who actually did something when marriage equality still seemed a faraway dream: Gavin Newsom.
As the dashing and telegenic mayor of San Francisco in 2004, Newsom simply decided to do the right thing. He declared that the city should issue marriage certificates to same-sex couples. The subsequent outpouring of joy from lesbian and gay couples — and handwringing from other politicians — changed the landscape forever. Here are five reasons why Newsom deserves to be in the front ranks of heroes when the history of marriage equality is written.
1. Newsom made marriage equality a reality for the first time.
Up until 2004, marriage equality was largely a theoretical debate. The issue had been debated in Hawaii in the 1990s, and courts in New England were grappling with it. But the actual first same-sex marriages were still three months away (in Massachusetts) when Newsom decided that the city should start issuing marriage licenses. Suddenly, the theoretical became very real, very fast.
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2. San Francisco showed the nation how much same-sex couples wanted to be married.
Newsom has said that he surprised at how many people showed up for marriage licenses. In the month until a court stopped the city from issuing more, more than 4,000 couples wedded. They weren’t all San Franciscans either. People flew in from around the country for the opportunity of having their relationships legally recognized. Newsom’s move proved that there was a pent-up demand for marriage equality. Newsom helped put a face on gay marriage in a way that no one had ever seen before.
3. He forced the issue within the Democratic Party.
A lot of professional Democrats, including openly gay Rep. Barney Frank, lambasted Newsom for being too bold and for contributing to John Kerry loss against incumbent George W. Bush. (Kerry was perfectly capable of losing on his own, but Bush used gay marriage to mobilize evangelical voters.) Democrats being what they are, they immediately ran to hide in the nearest cave for fear of backlash. But there was no getting around the fact that one of their own had started the party’s long evolution toward marriage equality.
4. He staked his career on his decision.
Sure, it’s easy to conclude that the mayor of San Francisco wouldn’t face much backlash for handing out marriage licenses to same-sex couples. But Newsom is an ambitious politician, and San Francisco City Hall was not his final destination. Newsom said that “I was reasonably convinced” that he had effectively ended his career. He had barely won election in the first place, and a recall campaign was not out of the question. For someone with statewide or national goals, the move was potentially the kiss of death.
5. He paved the way for all those attorney generals who now won’t defend marriage bans.
Attorneys general in a number of states, including Kentucky, Oregon, Virginia, have decided that being on the right side of history is more important than defending an unjust law. In essence, those AGs are saying that some principles transcend what’s on the books. Newsom reached that same conclusion, but a decade earlier. You could say he took the law into his own hands, which is what critics said at the time. Or you could say that he refused to recognize laws that are inherently unjust. That’s the way the debate is framed now, and it should be applied retroactively.
Newsom is now the lieutenant governor of California, and if there was any damage to his career, it was from the revelation in 2007 that he had had an affair with the wife of his campaign manager. There is no denying that San Francisco’s marriages led directly to Proposition 8 being on the 2008 ballot (though let’s not forget that the state Supreme Court sided with Newsom). But you can’t blame Newsom for the measure passing at a time when Barack Obama was overwhelmingly carrying the state in the same election.
Historians will debate whether Newsom’s decision was too bold, too soon. But sometimes boldness is needed to prove the point. And as time passes, it looks more and more like Newsom had it right all along. The backlash, though real, proved relatively short-lived. What has lasted is the growing acceptance that marriage equality is a right. That’s something Gavin Newsom recognized long before it was popular. For that he deserves a lot of credit for our current success.
Gavin Newsom for President. You heard it here first.
1EqualityUSA
Mr. Newsom acted on principle at a time when is was risky to do so. My spouse and I waited at dawn, in inclement weather, in a line that felt like history in the making. There was so much love in that line, waiting to get married, with a wedding party made up mostly of complete strangers, knowing it would be annulled by our current legal system. Straight supporters brought food and coffee, a doctor I know honked and cheered everyone on, having just returned from a ski trip, photographers were snapping shots of people who refused to be marginalized any longer. Gavin Newsom gained my respect during that time. His own father was against this notion of marriage equality and, yet, he went forward with it because it was the right thing to do and eloquently defending our desire for equality. We ordered two more copies of our marriage certificate, knowing that a letter would arrive in the mail, asking if we wanted our money back. It stated that our marriage license was not valid. We opted to have the cost of the license donated to equality causes. Prop H8’ers started spreading lies and whipping up hatred wherever they could. Mormons were funding much of the H8. Princeton’s Robert P. George squeezed out his NOM baby, whose nanny came in an amorphic form known as, “Maggie Gallagher,” and the internet exploded. People who had never uttered a word on the ‘net were compelled to write. I wrote for the first time in 2008. Ideas exchanged and people communicated about their personal experiences with injustice. Soldiers wrote poignant letters describing how they were treated legally differently from other soldiers, even though they had put their lives on the line. Politicians took sides, pastors too. Scalia spoke publicly about his disdain for this notion of equality for LGBT, hoping to sway the tide to his bigoted point of view. The Catholics spoke from their worldly pulpits about their disdain for LGBT, inexorably entwining Church with State and dipping their appendages in politics. Mormons, in their pathetic effort to be seen as a real religion, rather than the spurious cult (with zero archeological significance,) clung to the sides of so-called Christianity like barnacles, hitched to hate and drawing money off it. It was a heyday for the haters. Not since the Red Scare were they able to dig so deeply into the flock’s pockets. It was a payday for the cult and the politicized religions wallowing in the very worldliness against which Christ had so ardently warned. Their tongues gave them away. Hate rose from their gullets like undigested food, chyme, hydrochloric acid. NOM rode the wave (sorry to put the image in your head…Maggie G on a surfboard…mmm) In a “spectre of doom” tone of voice, Robert P. George coaxed Mormons at Brigham Young University to, “be aware,” basically laying out for these quaking cultists, the legal way marriage equality will be forced upon them. The Manhattan Declaration forced politicians to sign onto this roster of hate. John “weeping” Boehner appointed this thinker-hater to U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom, so that this man could spread his special brand of “love” throughout the globe. Thanks John Latent Boehner. The Supreme Court justices, the Catholic-5, followed suit, guided by Robert P. George, slinky,slinky, what a wonderful boy. Against all of this, Gavin Newsom stood up and said, “No.” Either we are all equal or none of us are. I’ll be forever grateful to him for having the courage to speak out for us. We have two marriage certificates, but the first one will always be my favorite.
Stefano
@1EqualityUSA: i was very touched by your comments. Thank you for sharing this moments. Have a nice day you and your wife (and children?).
Ronbo
Yes, Newsome truly deserves credit and our thanks. The second-greatest brave act award by a non-gay, is Joe Biden. He forced Obama’s hand by calling for marriage equality on national TV.
We should reward these people with an outpouring of love and support.
onthemark
#3 misstates the views of Barney Frank and others. If someone really thinks that marriage was more important in 2004 than ending the Iraq war, preventing a few thousand pointless American deaths and countless Iraqi deaths, that’s morally questionable to say the least.
The usual assimilationism run amok.
NoCagada
@onthemark: One should NEVER put anything above their own equal rights. Why should I give up my rights for another nation when those who already have those rights don’t???
onthemark
@NoCagada: Your second sentence makes no grammatical sense and I’m not sure what you’re trying to say there! But some of us in 2004 actually suspected that marriage was a Republican plot. At that point Massachusetts had had four Republican governors in a row, so all seven state Supreme Court justices were Republicans. In his memoir, former gov. Cellucci even brags about personally re-electing Bush with the marriage issue. Maybe this is a little TOO paranoid, but don’t rewrite history.
martinbakman
@Ronbo: I have trouble giving much credit to Biden, the Clintons or the Obamas. They all were clearly against SS marriage back when the Repubs were busy winning elections by making LGBT people the villain. For example, Biden voted for DOMA (defense of marriage act).
Perhaps Biden was the first voice in a Dem national strategy, but wasn’t that because polls were showing a majority of Americans favor SS marrige, and a very large majority of the next generation of voters favor SS marriage?
The true heroes are the city, county and state officials that put their careers on the line for doing the right thing. Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie said he lost his bid for re-election in a Democratic primary because of his decision to call a special session to legalize gay marriage. And he repeated that what he did was the right thing to do, that losing was worth it.
Last year in New Mexico, 77 year old Doña Ana County Clerk Lynn Ellins, began issuing marriage licenses to SS couples because it was the right thing to do.
The country followed people like Newsom, Ellins, and Abercrombie.
The Dems needed Biden to speak up. I’m just curious though how he explained his new position after voting for DOMA, although I don’t really care too much what he has to say.
Stefano
When someone as no more rational arguments, he talks over grammatical mistakes even if he understand the content quite clearly, or he tries to make a point with popular beliefs and hypothesis.
IcarusD
I would add one more important point about how pivotal Newsom’s actions in 2004 were. The California State Supreme Court halted those marriages in March of 2004, and then in August voided the marriages that had been performed. But that gave the City of San Francisco standing to sue to overturn Prop 22. And it was the City’s lawsuit, joined with other individuals who wanted to marry, that went to the California State Supreme Court in 2008 and was used to overturn Prop 22 and allow same-sex couples to marry in California.
Aromaeus
Sorry but no. I’m tired of us giving praise to straight people for doing the fundamentally right thing. That’s like praising men for not raping women. He staked his career? Gay people stake their lives just by existing.
MarionPaige
Newsom picked an election year to “marry” people and then when he saw that maybe being identified with gay marriage might hurt him more than help him politically, he distanced himself from the issue.
Does Newsom today want to be associated with Gay Marriage? Last I read, Newsom was actively trying to distance himself from the issue.
According to rumor, ROB REINER’s AFER was all about Reiner building his political profile for a possible run for Governor.
Can you picture it? Fucking Rob Reiner vs Fucking Gavin Newsom in a governor’s race with both of them trying to claim “rights” to Gay Fucking Marriage, it’s like a race to be in last place. Meanwhile, actual gay people have to contend with organized anti-gay groups formed because of gay marriage.
1EqualityUSA
Newsom didn’t look like he was distancing himself when he moderated the Olson and Boise discussion at the Fairmont Hotel via Commonwealth Club. His face was out there, his body remained on stage, and his voice was heard loudly and clearly. Your so full off shit MarionPaige.
MarionPaige
Olson and Boise? Aren’t those the two lawyers Reiner’s AFER hired to represent the couples AFER recruited to front AFER’s lawsuit against Prop 8?
So, you saying Newson moderated an Olson Boise discussion? Was that filmed by any chance? I’m sure it would make a nice part of a documentary about how much Reiner has done to legalize gay marriage.
1EqualityUSA
http://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/archive/podcast/david-boies-and-theodore-olson-case-marriage-equality-62614
They all spoke on June 26, 2014
…and just what have you done for our cause, besides tear down the efforts of others, anonymously?
MarionPaige
the bottom line continues to be that less that 100,000 couples in all of North American have taken advantage of gay marriage.
How many times have you seen this publicized in the media? If essentially “no one” is marrying someone of the same sex, why does this issue continue to gain headlines?
Michael Bedwell
FACT CHECK from someone who lived in San Francisco in 2004 and still does. BRAVO for your article, now:
1. Barney Frank DID publicly lambaste Newsom—and STILL does when asked. Frank is great in many ways but he can also be shamefully petty, and I still believe that the real reason he attacked Newsom had less to do with Newsom potentially costing anyone votes than his (unintentionally) stealing the spotlight from Barney’s Massachusetts before their first weddings.
2. Newsom’s political mentor, Sen. Dianne Feinstein also denounced him.
3. The Democratic Party has STILL never forgiven him for “embarrassing” them—and calling them out on THEIR lack of leadership. He’s the kind of youngish, attractive, smart, charismatic politician they would otherwise be publicly grooming for higher office yet he was barred from the stage at the 2004, 2008, and 2012 Democratic National Conventions—even though the latter was held AFTER the President finally “evolved”—READ: had the courage (or was trapped into it by Biden) to finally RETURN to his support for marriage equality that he UNEQUIVOCALLY gave IN WRITING when he was running for Illinois State Senate in 1996. NB: that is not to say I have any real problem with him playing games at least in 2008. It’s just I hate the hypocrisy of pretending that 1996 never happened.
4. Too few are aware that in 2004, when Obama was running for US Senator after Newsom ordered the City Clerk to issue same sex marriage licenses, he REFUSED to be photographed with Newsom at a San Francisco fundraiser for Obama’s campaign THAT NEWSOM WAS HOSTING!
5. Newsom has NEVER EVER “distanced himself” from what he did nor the issue.
6. HILLARY-NEWSOM 2016.
1EqualityUSA
If even one couple is denied equality, that is one too many.
MarionPaige
@Michael Bedwell “Newsom has NEVER EVER “distanced himself” from what he did nor the issue.”
I seem to recall reading some article (in the NYT, I think) around the time that Newsom’s mayor’s term was ending and there was nothing in his future in which the phrase “distancing himself” was used in re Newsom and gay marriage.
MarionPaige
@1EqualityUSA “If even one couple is denied equality, that is one too many.”
Isn’t that similar to something Churchill said during World War II about evacuating an English city prior to a German bombing?
“If only one English Couple dies from a German Bombing, that’s one too many. Even if it means alerting Germany to the fact that we’ve broken their code?
1EqualityUSA
“We can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have exhausted all the other possibilities.” –Winston Churchill
Michael Bedwell
@ Page: Your memory could be correct about the NYT’s article, but that doesn’t mean THE ARTICLE was correct. It’s become something of a habit for any gays living here to cringe every time the NYT has another article about The City. They are so consistently wrong in key facts that one could easily conclude the authors write them without ever actually setting proverbial foot here or interviewed anyone actually living here capable of informed thought. Thank you.
MarionPaige
there were also quotes attributed to Newsom (in either the NYT, the New Yorker or other) in which Newsom lamented being so identified with one issue and he openly wondered whether he could ever be elected to anything again. My recollection is that Newsom then only surfaced again on gay marriage when AFER went to the Supreme Court (and there again appeared to be some political mileage to be gained from being associated again with the issue). Newsom hasn’t actually been elected to anything since his SF stunt.
BTW, don’t think Newsom was the first mayor to “marry” gay couples.
jimontp
@MarionPaige: WHO are you? What a ridiculous comment, “I read somewhere (maybe it was the NYT)”
Who cares what you “seem to remember?” The FACTS ARE:
Newsom was the new golden boy of the California Democratic Party in 2004, on his way to Governor, when he “did the right” thing.” in his words, and instantly became persona non grata for almost all Democrat party hacks. Blamed for losing the 2004 election, severely chastised by Diane Feinstein (Newsom’s mentor), Gavin looked like he was doomed to political oblivion. Because he took a principled stand for equal rights!
And where the hell do you get all those stats about fewer gay marriages? All the stories I read are about SS marriages blooming everywhere.
What exactly is YOUR agenda?
1EqualityUSA
That, “stunt,” as you so rancorously worded it, is the topic of our conversation today in 2014. Quite an impact to get you thumping away on your keys. This (elected in 2010) Lieutenant Governor of California was ahead of his time. Do you have any other feathers you want to pull out of your ass, MarionPaige? Damn, did you short yourself on your meds today?
jimontp
@MarionPaige: HOW the hell do YOU get away with FUCKING about anyone who favors equal rights for gays WHERE are the moderators on this page?
Why aren’t blatantly homophobic comments , laced with profanity, generating more disapproval????
Saint Law
Skim-reading the MarionPaige troll I am struck once again by the sheer indefatigable persistence of a certain type of stupidity.
I guess the effort of thinking exerts a degree of constraint on, well, simple typing. With out it: prolixity runs wild and one can go on and on (and on) but, alas, to no productive end whatsoever.
1EqualityUSA
Prolixity….good word. Hopefully the last on this thread. It takes a Saint to put a stop to this madness, yes?
MarionPaige
@1EqualityUSA As I said, Newsom hasn’t been elected to anything since SF. Newsom was “elected” to Lieutenant Governor in the same sense that people went to the presidential voting booths because of Biden.
I will say that it means something in American history when someone who looks like Newsom and Mitt Romney cant sell bullshit to the American public.
jimontp
@Michael Bedwell: Thanks. As another long time SF resident and voter who lived through all those days, I was AMAZED by what Newsom did . I had not voted for him in his first race for mayor, cause I thought he was “too conservative” for a Democratic mayor of SF. So I was as shocked as the rest of the country, when Gavin made history. He is so moderate by SF standards, but way ahead of the rest of the Democratic Party.
But I’m not so convinced on Hillary making any principled stand on equality, she is much too cautious and tentative.
1EqualityUSA
It all comes down to policies. Romney scared the pie out of me. The real power are those nine seats on the Supreme Court. Look how the Catholic-5 have been stacking the deck since Citizens United.
DarkZephyr
MarionPage seems to have two goals here at Queerty.com. To talk shit about marriage equality and to talk shit about white people. That’s *it*. If marriage equality REALLY is the non-issue that she claims it is, why does she care one way or another? She sure is quite passionate in her disdain for a supposed non-issue. The truth is that she is an mole and she needs to be ignored and forgotten. Period.
DarkZephyr
@DarkZephyr: is a* mole
Saint Law
@1EqualityUSA: “It takes a Saint to put a stop to this madness yes.”
Oh I wish.
There are, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, some right fucknutz on this site; but with Dxley, say, or ‘Masc’ Pride, or even Micheal ‘Jim Bryant’ Mellor, you can sort of see why they are the way they are and what it is that they want.
But the point of the MarionPaige troll completely escapes me.
samwise343
These are the people who deserve the most credit for same sex marriage:
Richard Baker and James Michael McConnell. They were the gay activists who applied for a marriage license in Minnesota in 1970. Their Supreme Court is the one call Baker v. Nelson. We lost the battle then, but the fight continued.
Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD). On behalf of seven couples, they sued a government agency in 2001 in Massachusetts. People in Massachusetts won the right to marry due to a state Supreme Court ruling in 2004.
And, of course, Gavin Newsom.
MarionPaige
A Smart Politician would have looked at the declining marriage rates among heterosexuals in North America and the fact that gay people couldn’t marry and He would have proposed an alternative / revision to marriage that allowed everybody to “marry” – any one or more people who wanted to share their lives together. Reportedly, the number of unmarried adults in North America has exceeded the number of married adults.
AS AN ASIDE IN RE THE SUPREME COURT – there is this argument at the federal level that marriage is a state issue and that the federal government should leave that issue to the states. However, as I understand it, Utah was required by Congress / the federal government to outlaw polygamy as a condition to it becoming a state. The point being that, so far, I don’t recall anyone references the fact that CONGRESS did in fact concern itself with “marriage” when it concluded that polygamy was “undesirable” enough to prevent the admittance of any “state” that legalized it.
MarionPaige
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if brain dead hustlers like Rob Reiner and Newsom start claiming that they proposed the llc as an alternative to marriage. As we’ve seen with “Nick Denton invented the blog” and “Forcing The Spring”, with the right media connections you can get pretty close to re-writing reality.
1EqualityUSA
Polygamy is forbidden to all, so there is no equality issue, as nobody can have it. Marriage is (was) forbidden only for the “unpopular” Americans, and that is where the inequality exists.
onthemark
@MarionPaige: Just wondering:
Are you actually *against* same-sex marriage?
Or do you merely object to the extreme over-emphasis on it because it’s an issue that appeals mostly to white upper-middle-class twits?
I think I can guess your answer, but I’d enjoy hearing it from you. 🙂
DarkZephyr
@onthemark: “white upper-middle-class twits”
So you are a r*cist twit then?
onthemark
@DarkZephyr: I’m white; I’m under the impression that “MarionPaige” is black. I’m just trying to figure out what exactly her (?) views are.
You can try spelling twit with an A if you like.
MarionPaige
@onthemark “Or do you merely object to the extreme over-emphasis on it because it’s an issue that appeals mostly to white upper-middle-class twits?”
Who let sanity on this topic?
What I object to is “The Gay Skin Game” and, Fucking Gay Marriage is just another example of The Gay Skin Game. Specifically,
As we’ve said many times, you have to understand how discrimination lawsuits are handled in federal court to understand THE SKIN GAME. The first defenses to discrimination lawsuits at the federal level is for the company to claim that it supports EEO and that it has a non-discrimination policy in place. IN EFFECT, every company in America with more than about six workers, has a legal incentive to ADVERTISE IN MINORITY MEDIA and to at least give the impression that it has a non-discrimination policy. As we’ve said, after The Civil Rights Act of 1964, SOME FUCKING TIRED ASS WHITE QUEEN looked at all of the money in advertising Black Media was getting from corporations eager to claim that they supported EEO for Blacks and THAT WHITE QUEEN decided to MAKE GAY A LEGAL MINORITY GROUP FOR THE ADVERTISING. The entirety of gay media, whether they are fucking smart enough to realize it or IS BASED ON SELLING MAJOR CORPORATIONS A LEGAL DEFENSE TO DISCRIMINATION LAWSUITS FROM GAY PEOPLE – i.e., THE GAY SKIN GAME.
WIth Gay Fucking Marriage, what you have/ had was a Grandiose bullshit that essentially distracted attention away from ( 1 ) The fact that marriage rates were declining across the board in the US; ( 2 ) that a revolutionary revision to “marriage” that included everyone was possible but was being ignored; and, ( 3 ) THE BIGGEST BULLSHIT OF ALL is that the non-fucking issue of Gay Fucking Marriage gave the erroneous impression that GAY Activists and GAY .Org ACTUALLY GAVE A SHIT ABOUT GAY PEOPLE (when in fact all they give a shit about is selling corporate america a legal defense to discrimination lawsuits from gay people – The Gay Skin Game) i.e., THERE IS NO GAY CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1964.
Instead of spending millions of dollars on A GAY CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1964 – an issue that corporate america doesn’t want but that would actually help gay people, Gay Actvists instead wasted millions of dollars and generated nation wide hate groups against gay people FOR A FUCKING ISSUE THAT ESSENTIALLY NO ONE GIVE A SHIT ABOUT – GAY FUCKING MARRIAGE. No politican gives a shit about 100,000 married same sex couples.
Rob Reiner and NEwsom are just like that ORIGINAL TRIED ASS WHITE QUEEN who looked at Black Media and decided to make Gay a legal minority for the advertising. Reiner and Newsom are no better than Koch and Giulini – they saw GAY as something to use to raise their political profile (in the way that Koch and Giuliani saw hate against Black as a way to raise their political profiles). I don’t think there are a whole lot of thinking gay men who view FUCKING NEWSOME as a hero (nor Rob Fucking Reiner).
milkcluber
Newsom’s 2004 decision was largely based on the fact that months earlier he narrowly won election after losing almost the entire LGBT vote, in part because he refused to provide health benefits for domestic partners of his employees despite being bankrolled by the Getty fortune. He admitted that at the Milk Club interview. He also opposed the annual Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence charity fundraiser because it coincided with the Catholic celebration of Easter, and authored a resolution saluting Collin Powell despite his opposition to allowing LGBT to volunteer for the military. He was politically vulnerable and he knew it, and even spending five times his opponent he barely won election.
When he approved issuing marriage licenses, he was careful not to be photographed performing ceremonies, and had his brother-in-law be the approved photographer for his video on gay marriage that featured on its cover not an LGBT couple but Newsom himself. What else could you possibly want to know to understand this was always about him – including his frequent whining about what a price he was paying. Balderdash.
It was the overwhelming image of LGBT couples lining up to be married, and a City Hall filled with flowers sent from people across the nation to be given to a marrying couple that created the change. They deserve the credit. At best, Newsom gets credit for reading the politics of SF (which clearly was not opposed to gay marriage by that time), and not standing in the way. But an act of conscience? I don’t think his record on this or any other issue demonstrates that to be the case.
MarionPaige
@milkcluber
What chance does reality stand against people like Newsom and Reiner who have PR machines behind them?
It’s like you can still read shit referring to Giuliani as “America’s Mayor”. Koch’s original obit in the NYT didn’t mention AIDs. And, the hustler most responsible for provoking a lot of anti-gay voters to the polls for George Bush is Newsom.
1EqualityUSA
milkcluber, I didn’t know all of the back story on this. Thanks. I don’t know why it’s easier to accept info from you than others, perhaps it’s said in a less poisonous, toxic way, a matter of fact way, with no agenda. I sometimes wonder if Mags Gallagher signs on here with other names. Once, a commenter named nagananou used the same idioms and sentence structure and would slide these anti-marriage equality lines in that were so obvious. Thanks for your paragraphs.
PARKAVMAN
Newsom may have done it for political reasons at the start, but the is still making progress in his career in the state and probably will go on to achieve success in the national arena. Knowing the right time to push an agenda can provide a lot of help. It did to the LGBT community in SF an CA.
Chris
I remember when he did this; and I remember the criticism that was heaped on him by the “responsible” members of the democratic party (including his own senators) and by gay organizations for him jumping the gun. I also remember those same organizations getting all hot and bothered when the case for marriage equality was filed in CA. ….. From a distance of 3,000 miles, the motivations for both did not matter as much as did the fact that, at last, people were striking out, breaking away from “responsible” leadership within their own groups, and doing what they thought needed to be done. For that, I respect them.
MarionPaige
I still think it’s funny how today, White Men like Newsom and Romney come across as being so sleazy and Vampire like. It’s like somewhere along the line that John Kennedy look became camp.
http://youtu.be/mzXWGyndKP0
unclemike
@MarionPaige: Were you born with all this sand in your vagina, or is it attracted to your acidic vitriol like maggots to necrotic flesh?
DarkZephyr
I am SO goddam sick of MarionPaige’s hatred of white people and her attacks on marriage equality. And it seems that her hatred of same sex marriage is tied to her hatred of white people as well. Why is this silly r*cist b*tch allowed to post here? She needs to get tossed the hell out of here.
onthemark
Well I see the upper-middle-class twit contingent is having a conniption, perhaps after one too many vodka & tonics at the beach house.
Apparently you guys cannot bear the thought that a few gay people out there in Oakland or New Jersey or flyover country might not be equally as thrilled as you are about marriage. (Which doesn’t mean they’re against it – not at all.)
Is that a threat to the whole grand plan, somehow? Must every gay person everywhere be equally as red-hot excited as you are about your fucking real estate transactions getting easier? 🙂
@DarkZephyr: See “Is Marriage For White People?” by Ralph Richard Banks. And at least try reading The Atlantic occasionally, since anything to the left of that would be too much for you. The Nation would probably make your head explode.
@1EqualityUSA: “said in a less poisonous, toxic way” … “I sometimes wonder if Mags Gallagher signs on here with other names.” Yeah, THAT’S not poisonous & toxic at all (sarc).
No one in this thread – even MarionPaige – is actually AGAINST same-sex marriage. Get a grip.
MarionPaige
My understanding is that the marriage rates were dropping across all social and economic levels when gay marriage activists started up their gay marriage propaganda machine.
Marriage for wealthy people is a very different animal than marriage for other people because the wealthy are clearly not relying solely on a marriage license for their estate and financial planning needs.
And then, the divorce rates show that even the marriage rates can be misleading because half of those marriages end in divorce.
As I said, it is rumored that the number of unmarried adults now outnumber the number of married adults in the US. THIS of course means that hustlers like Newsom and Rob Reiner will eventually go after the unmarried demographic. That’s what political hustlers do, they seize issues that look like they will yield the most attention and votes.
MarionPaige
btw, my feedback from gay couples interested in legal relationships showed that the deciding factor was children. Most of my email came from female-female couples who had children. The same sex marriage stats also show more female-female couples in all areas where same sex marriage is legal (except for new york city)
1EqualityUSA
Cassandra opines, “Apollo, Apollo!
God of all ways, but only Death’s to me,
Once and again, O thou, Destroyer named,
Thou hast destroyed me, thou, my love of old!”
vive
@marionpage, @onthemark, I agree with you, though I’m afraid LGBT liberals have become voices in the wilderness since the upper middle class swallowed hook line and sinker the likes of Andrew Sullivan’s f@scist “sanitizing” of the gay “brand.”
For the rest, you may benefit from reading the “Against Equality” archive, which is online and in print.