Unrepentant
In San Francisco on Sunday, Mayor Gavin Newsome spoke at city hall to commemorate the one year anniversary of the Valentine's Day Revolution. It was a year ago that Newsome ordered the City Clerk to begin performing same-sex weddings in keeping with his reading of the California constitution.
3,000 invalidated marriage licenses, 12 state gay marriage bans and one reelected George Bush later, Mayor Newsome is still committed - and unrepentant:.
"I've never felt a greater sense of purpose but beyond anything else, an obligation to finish this job. We will not back up. I have no regrets."
He should.
Newsome of all people should have learned that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Whether or not you attribute the 2004 electoral calamity for gay Americans to Newsome, it seems clear now(as we said then) that Newsome was wrong both as a matter of law and political strategy. As we wrote in States' Blights last March:
Unfortunately, and despite the best of intentions, Newsom’s actions have triggered a backlash, including the divisive amendment to the Constitution backed by Bush. Even a prominent supporter of gay marriage as Congressman Barney Frank said that “I was sorry to see the San Francisco thing go forward…If we go forward in Massachusetts and get same-sex marriage on the books, it's going to be binding and incontestable.” Frank rightly points out that not only has San Francisco become a diversion, it creates the lasting impression that gay marriage advocates among elected officials promote the notion that unpopular laws can be broken or ignored. In that sense, Newsom appears little different than Roy Moore, the former elected Chief Judge of the Alabama Supreme Court who was unseated for refusing a federal court judge’s demand that he remove a two-ton monument of the Ten Commandments he had erected on courthouse property.
As predicted, the California Supreme Court sadly though correctly voided the licenses issued in San Francisco, ruling that Newsom had overstepped his authority.
But more promising developments seem to support the strategy we advocated of litigation by individual couples. A ruling is expected any day on a pair of lawsuits filed by the city and same-sex couples that seek to overturn California's marriage laws. In New York, a state judge deemed that gay couples must be allowed to marry in keeping with the meaning of the state constitution. And in Massachusetts, gay couples are getting married and creating a new reality on the ground.
As we reflect this Valentine's Day on the last, it worth showing respect and regret for a man whose heart, if his not head, was in the right place.
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