 S.F Mayor Gavin
Newsom Defends Stance on Same-Sex Marriage
Maverick Democrat Compares Issue to Civil Rights Struggle
By Kate Callen I April 18,
2005
A capacity crowd at RIMAC Arena witnessed a rare spectacle on Monday night: an elected official who revels in being a pariah and shrugs off his dim political prospects.
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, delivering this year's DeWitt Higgs Memorial Lecture, discussed the continuing furor over his 2003 decision to grant marriage licenses to more than 4,000 same-sex couples. Comparing his battle to earlier civil rights struggles over gender and race, the 37-year-old mayor said, "We have a moral obligation to treat everybody equally and fairly.
"This issue is simple," he added. "It's about discrimination. It's about equal protection under the law. It's about righting wrongs and giving people the dignity to live their lives out loud."
The annual lecture honors DeWitt "Dutch" Higgs, a 16-year UC Regent who, as chair, resisted intense pressure to fire philosophers Herbert Marcuse and Angela Davis from the UCSD faculty. This year's lecture was sponsored by Earl Warren College, the UCSD Law & Society Program, and California Western School of Law.
Newsom began by noting that he had "failed twice to get into the UC system and ended up at a great Jesuit school," Santa Clara University. Today, "my own university won't allow me to speak," he said, "because of the controversy that surrounds this issue."
Newsom gained notoriety just three weeks after he was sworn in January 18, 2003, as the 42nd mayor of San Francisco by his father, former California Court of Appeal Justice William A. Newsom. Two days later, attending President Bush's State of the Union address, Newsom was startled to hear the president's emphatic resolve "to defend the sanctity of marriage."
Bush "was going to use his presidency to write discrimination into the Constitution of the United States," Newsom recalled, "and I felt utterly powerless [until] I reminded myself: 'I'm the mayor of San Francisco.'"
Starting February 12, when Newsom opened the door to same-sex marriage with a license issued to Del Martin, 83, and Phyllis Lyon, 79, gay couples from 46 states and 8 countries flocked to San Francisco to wed, and many were accompanied by jubilant relatives. "This was not just about the validation of 4,000 couples," Newsom said. "This was much bigger. This was about the validation of a child's life and of a parent's life."
In the two years since, California and 20 other states have prohibited same-sex marriages, but California's ban was struck down March 15 by San Francisco Superior Court Judge Richard Kramer, and judges in Massachusetts, New York, and Washington also have ruled that such bans are unconstitutional. With the debate polarizing the country, Newsom has been shunned by fellow Democrats.
"That's why I wasn't invited to the Democratic Convention," he said. "That's why Bill Clinton hasn't called me since the election. . That's why a well-known senator, who was the great hope of the Democratic Party and who spoke at the convention, when he was in town the other day, his staff asked quietly if there would be any cameras in the room because he didn't want to be photographed with me.
"And that's why," Newsom added, "I'm impressed that you invited me down here to speak to you today."
Newsom castigated Democrats who oppose same-sex marriage but favor gay civil unions. "Civil unions are separate but unequal," he said. "To say that you acknowledge a relationship as unique, and you're willing to give legal status to that relationship, but then to say, 'No, you can't enter into our institution,' that fundamentally is wrong. And so shame on my party, and shame on the Republican Party, for trying to keep people out of an institution they deserve to be in."
The first-term mayor was insouciant about his future - "I'm not naïve; my chances of getting elected, even in San Francisco, are almost nil" - and about the longevity of most political careers. "Guys like me come and go," he said. "We are a dime a dozen . we're given a moment in time."
But he was passionate about the supremacy of a principled cause. Calling the crusade for same-sex marriage "the last great civil rights struggle, and it's in our lifetime," he looked back at the women's suffrage movement in the 1880s and legal battles over racial equality and interracial marriage in the 1960s. As in those earlier cases, current public opinion is running against gay marriage, and many advocates are urging caution.
Citing Martin Luther King's observation that "Wait almost always means never," Newsom said, "How dare they say we should wait? . To protect the minority against the whims of the majority is what the Constitution is for. . If public opinion were the guiding determinant on whether or not women should vote or there should be civil rights or interracial marriage, I kid you not, we probably wouldn't be there."
Newsom expressed confidence that Judge Kramer's ruling would be upheld "if and when the State of California ultimately adjudicates that the Constitution of California is no place for discrimination, and I think that's an inevitability." He added, "I'm more resolved than ever that what we did was right; I'll never back down from this, never."
On another issue of intense importance throughout the state, Newsom playfully told the UCSD audience, "We definitely want to make sure you guys don't get the stem cell institute down here in San Diego. Please help me out. I need some good news in San Francisco."
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