Free love in San Fran again

shotamoose

Anyone else been following the gay-marriage-fest that's been happening in San Francisco? Here's a handy summary.

On January 8, Gavin Newsom was inaugurated as San Francisco's new mayor. Two weeks later he went to Washington to hear President Bush's State of the Nation address, including the threat to introduce a Constitutional Amendment forbidding gay marriage.

"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," Mr Newsom said. "I just found some of the words quite divisive."

(this is according to the New York Times , by the way. Registration required)

When Mr. Newsom returned to San Francisco, he said, he read the court decisions that authorized gay marriage in Massachusetts, as well as the United States Supreme Court ruling last year on sodomy. As he mulled those precedents and Mr. Bush's comments, he said, he became convinced that he had a moral obligation to open the doors to same-sex marriages.

So he did. On February 12th, he told the County Clerk to start providing marriage certificates on a 'non-discriminatory basis', declaring that “California’s Constitution is clear: discrimination is immoral, it is illegal and it is antithetical to our most cherished values – liberty and freedom”.

Since then, 3,200 same-sex couples have been married in San Francisco. There was a massive party thrown for most of them yesterday.

Predictably, a lot of people are outraged. Bush has said he is 'troubled', and Arnold Schwarzenegger is acting like a fool, warning against the gay marriages because of "injured or dead people" from all the "riots" breaking out, of which there have been exactly none.

Polls show that a majority in both California and the country as a whole are against gay marriage. The mayor doesn't seem to mind. "If I wait for the polls in this country to turn around, we're never going to change the order of things in this country. Polls, to me, don't matter. Principles matter". He has invited Bush to come to SF and meet one of the newly-wed couples "and discuss with them why they simply want the same rights as a couple of 51 years that my wife and I enjoy today.” Bush hasn't taken him up on that yet.

As for conservative critics, Mr. 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."

:)I think I'm in love.:):)

So far, two court challenges against the move have failed. The Californian state government has said it won't recognise the licenses, and Newsom has threatened to take them to the courts if they don't. T'will be interesting to see how this one plays out ...

ixoy

Originally posted by shotamoose
Polls show that a majority in both California and the country as a whole are against gay marriage. The mayor doesn't seem to mind. "If I wait for the polls in this country to turn around, we're never going to change the order of things in this country. Polls, to me, don't matter. Principles matter".

Indeedy, I'm sure most polls, awhile ago, would have been against the terrible country shattering concept of inter-racial marriage...
Just because it's a minority interest does not - on humanitarian grounds - make it something the majority should control.

govinda

theonion.com presents an as-yet-unthought-of-somewhat-radical solution to the 'problem' :-)

http://www.theonion.com/news.php?i=1&n=1