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Some Democrats Blame One of Their Own

While working on his own fame and screwing his party over, as well as many gays, he claims he was just doing the right thing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/05/po...newsom.html?hp

November 5, 2004
Some Democrats Blame One of Their Own
By DEAN E. MURPHY

AN FRANCISCO, Nov. 4 - A year into his job, Mayor Gavin Newsom could hardly be more popular. A survey last weekend put his approval rating among San Franciscans at 80 percent.

Polls show that a mainstay of the Democratic mayor's support has been his stance on same-sex marriage. But with his party reeling from Senator John Kerry's defeat on Tuesday, Mr. Newsom's decision in February to open City Hall to thousands of gay weddings has become a subject of considerable debate among Democrats.

Some in the party were suggesting even before the election that Mr. Newsom had played into President Bush's game plan by inviting a showdown on the divisive same-sex-marriage issue.

Most of the talk has been behind closed doors. But when Senator Dianne Feinstein, a fellow Democrat and Newsom supporter, answered a question about the subject at a news conference outside her San Francisco home on Wednesday, the prickly discussion spilled into the open.

"I believe it did energize a very conservative vote," Ms. Feinstein said of the same-sex marriages here. "I think it gave them a position to rally around. I'm not casting a value judgment. I'm just saying I do believe that's what happened."

"So I think that whole issue has been too much, too fast, too soon,'' she added. "And people aren't ready for it."

Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, who was a witness at the first same-sex marriage at San Francisco City Hall, said she received a flurry of angry e-mail messages on Thursday from people upset about Ms. Feinstein's public dressing down of Mr. Newsom.

The topic was also raised with Mr. Newsom himself at a news conference on Wednesday and when he was a guest on a radio talk show here Thursday morning. He said he had no regrets.

Some of his backers were less restrained. In an interview, Ms. Kendell accused Ms. Feinstein of looking for "easy scapegoats."

"Shame on Senator Feinstein and other Democratic leaders for latching to the most facile and shallow of explanations for the results," she said. "What Mayor Newsom did really accelerated the conversation and the movement, and I will never accept an analysis that says a leader who stands for equality and fairness and who has the courage of his convictions is doing the wrong thing."

One openly gay member of Congress, Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, disagreed. Mr. Frank was opposed to the San Francisco weddings from the start and told Mr. Newsom as much before the ceremonies began. He urged the mayor to follow the Massachusetts path, which involved winning approval for the marriages in court before issuing licenses.

In a telephone interview on Thursday, Mr. Frank said he felt vindicated by the election results. In Massachusetts, every state legislator on the ballot who supported gay rights won another term. By contrast, constitutional amendments against gay marriage won handily in 11 states - including Ohio, an important battleground - in large part, Mr. Frank said, because of the "spectacle weddings" in San Francisco.

Mr. Frank said Mr. Newsom had helped to galvanize Mr. Bush's conservative supporters in those states by playing into people's fears of same-sex weddings.

Had the Massachusetts approach been followed, he said, "I think there would have been some collateral damage'' in the election, but "a lot less.''

"The thing that agitated people were the mass weddings,'' he said, adding, "It was a mistake in San Francisco compounded by people in Oregon, New Mexico and New York. What it did was provoke a lot of fears."

"He created a sense there was chaos,'' Mr. Frank said of Mr. Newsom, "rather than give us a chance to show, as we have in Massachusetts, that this doesn't mean anything to anyone else."

Some conservative opponents of same-sex marriages concurred. Though the backlash against gay weddings was kick-started by court rulings in Massachusetts - and even earlier in Alaska and Hawaii - opposition resonated with a much broader group of conservatives after Mr. Newsom put San Francisco at the heart of the debate, said Jordan Lorence, a lawyer with the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian group that sued to block the marriages here.

The California Supreme Court eventually declared the 4,000 or so weddings invalid, but the images of same-sex couples' embracing in San Francisco were permanently etched in the public's mind, Mr. Lorence said.

"The court decisions have been the triggers, but Mayor Newsom definitely accelerated the reaction," Mr. Lorence said. "I think we can get 10 or 15 more state constitutional amendments in the 2006 and 2008 election cycle, and maybe even more, because people feel so strongly about this."

In a telephone interview, Mr. Newsom acknowledged that he had taken some heat from fellow Democrats. But he said the criticism was off the mark. Mr. Bush decided to use gay marriage as a political wedge well before the weddings in San Francisco, the mayor said, and the issue had already been politicized by the court rulings in Massachusetts.

Mr. Newsom offered no apologies.

-Rudey

I saw it, and I think the reason the Democrats lost was Kerry's daughter, who wore a see-thru dress at the Cannes Film Festival.

It reminded everyone of the two boobs who were running.

Re: Some Democrats Blame One of Their Own

Quote:

Originally posted by Rudey
A year into his job, Mayor Gavin Newsom could hardly be more popular. A survey last weekend put his approval rating among San Franciscans at 80 percent.

Well, yeah. He has a hot wife, and that's what's important.

http://courttv.aol.com/graphics/abou...ndex_photo.jpg

The religious right were going to rally around this issue anyway.

I agree that people are just disappointed right now and looking for a place to point fingers, which is counterproductive.

Well I wouldn't blame any particular person for this, but its really unfortunate that this issue cam to a head when it did.

It brought "cultural conservatives" out in record numbers.

Sugar and spice was right in a comment she made before about it being hard for many of us to empathatically relate to regions of the country that vote based on "moral issues".

Right after the election Peter Jennings was asking how the media could have missed this, and the reply was that the media is generally based in metropolitan areas and doesn't interact daily with people that love nascar, and own pick-ups and guns.

I'll take that a step farther and say its extremely hard for me to relate with people that worship high school football stars and create multi million dollar stadiums for their teams.

And yet these are the regions of the nation and the people that GW swept.

I'm going to have to process that.

I have heard it theorized that the conservatives ran an incredibly effective campaign strategy by getting that issue on the ballot in so many states and thereby getting more conservative voters out there. Although, that proposal passed (banning gay marriage, unions or any "similar type of unions") 58.6% to 41.4% and Kerry won our state 55% to 45%. That was not what people in Michigan made the central issue when voting for President.

Dee

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/dai...e_2.guest.html

Quote:

RUSH LIMBAUGH SAYS:
Democrats Make Gays Target
November 5, 2004
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

The head of the National Gay and Lesbian Task force issued a statement yesterday saying that it's not fair or accurate to blame the homosexual agenda for the Democrats defeat at the polls. And he's exactly right. And I'll tell you what, if I were a gay activist or just, you know, a non-activist homosexual, member of the community, I would really resent being the focus of blame that the Democrats are trying to lay this loss off on. I really would. It would bother me to no end.

You know, this is a great example. The liberals and the Democrats all run around and love to say that gays are mistreated because of Republicans. And that the Republicans are homophobes and bigots and racists and sexists, extremists and mean and all this rot, and yet the Democrats lose an election and who do they point the finger at? Gays. It was gay marriage that did it. Now, they're trying to say it's the bigots and the sexists and the racists and the homophobes in the red states that -- I still can't get used to being red, you know, I associate that color with the Communists and the Soviets. But I'm a red state guy and they're trying to lay this off on us, but that's not what's happening. And this guy from the gay and lesbian task force, his name is Matt Foreman, has got it right. He knows the Democrats are laying it off on him, not themselves. He said, "It's not fair or accurate to blame the gay agenda for Democrats' defeat at the polls."

"Months ago, we all knew that if George Bush was re-elected, 'gay marriage' would be blamed. A scapegoat is required. Offer up the gays." His statement continues as follows: "The right wing was indeed energized. I would be too if I shared their values. The Bush Administration has catered to their every request and fed them tons of red meat -- abstinence-only-until-marriage 'sex education,' the 'Faith Based Initiative,' the ban on late term abortion, restrictions on oversees contraception programs, the ban on stem cell research, and yes, gay marriage. It's sickening and fascinating that when one in five voters said moral values was the most important issue for them, pundits immediately equated that with gay marriage alone. Frankly, the right did a better job in turning out their vote in key places. They've been building their machine -- illegally, unethically, or both -- through churches for 30 years. They have seized and occupied moral values for years."

There was no seizing it. This is where the libs finally go wrong. We didn't seize anything. We held onto them. The left has abandoned them. The Democrats have abandoned all talk of morality. They don't want any talk of morality. The left simply fled. The left fled any area of the country where values and morality are considered important. They ran away from it. The idea that a bunch of conservatives have been laying in wait, hiding in the tall grass and waiting to sneak out at night and seize something is ridiculous. It's the exact opposite. Conservatives have been desperately trying to hold on to traditions and institutions that we all think have made the country great. The left abandoned them. Now all of a sudden the spin is that the left was just as interested but the right was better and more illegal and we seized this stuff. Well, Mr. Foreman has it right. He understands that the Democrats are laying this loss off on gays because of this morality question that showed up on 20% of the exit polls.

You know, when every Sunday John Kerry showed up in a black church somewhere, as did Al Gore before him, as did Clinton before him, as did Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, forever these guys, but they go into these churches at election time. They don't go into these churches as a matter of course. They go into these churches at election time. They practice religiosity without being religious is what they do. They try to convince people that they're religious but they don't practice it. Well, people who are know the difference and they can see pretenders and frauds. So I think Mr. Foreman here is on the money. He's right. I mean, he's just been made a target. He and his people have just made been a target by the way the Democrats are trying to shift the blame for the loss of the election on gay marriage.

There's no question that the judges on the Massachusetts Supreme Court and Gavin Newsom, the mayor of San Francisco, caused a backlash, but so did Michael Moore and so did Whoopi Goldberg and so did Richard Clarke and so did George Soros and so did moveon.org and so did 60 Minutes and so did Bill Burkett and so did The New York Times. They all caused a backlash, the whole Democrat establishment, the political campaign establishment. Every element caused a backlash. But the liberals want you to think that this is all because of gay marriage. So if you are a gay activist or you're a pretty politically active gay, one way or the other, and the Democratic Party is your home, you better -- I mean just look. Listen to Mr. Foreman. Don't listen to me. I know you're not going to listen to me because I'm a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe in your mind and Mr. Foreman is not. He's the head of the National Gay and Lesbian Task force and he's concerned about this. Who is it that's making gays a target? The liberals are. The Democratic Party is making gays a target by blaming all this on them, rather than on themselves. Oh, some people are blaming Kerry but I mean not too many. That will happen as time unfolds, but they're going to give Kerry a pass for awhile. Well, of course I'll be blamed. I mean, but I hope so. That's the difference. You know, I want to be blamed. I want to continue to be in the cross-hairs, in the gun sights of these people in the political movement.

END TRANSCRIPT

http://www.thetaskforce.org/media/re...?releaseID=757

Quote:

Press Release
Thursday, November 4, 2004

Blame gays? Don't buy it!
A Statement from Matt Foreman

MEDIA CONTACT:
Task Force Communications Department
Sheri A. Lunn, Director of Communications
media@thetaskforce.org
323-857-8751

Statement from Matt Foreman, Executive Director
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force

"Months ago, we all knew that if George Bush was re-elected, 'gay marriage' would be blamed. A scapegoat is required. Offer up the gays.

The right wing was indeed energized. I would be too if I shared their "values." The Bush Administration has catered to their every request and fed them tons of red meat - abstinence-only-until-marriage "sex education," the "Faith Based Initiative," the ban on late term abortion, restrictions on overseas contraception programs, the ban on stem cell research, and yes, gay marriage. It's sickening and fascinating that when one in five voters said "moral values" was the most important issue for them, pundits immediately equated that with gay marriage alone.

Frankly, the right did a better job in turning out their vote in key places. They've been building their machine - illegally, unethically, or both - through churches for 30 years. They have seized and occupied "moral values" for years.

Our side is not going to make up these deficiencies in one cycle.

But to pin all of this on "the gays" is wrong. Don't buy it."

Quote:

Originally posted by IowaStatePhiPsi
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/dai...e_2.guest.html
http://www.thetaskforce.org/media/re...?releaseID=757

Aside from the media releases, can I ask you a couple things?

Do you think this mayor was really doing this because he cared? If so, I'd like to know why. At the time he did this, there were tons of news stories about him trying to climb his way up the party ladder and move on to governor and president.

As for how gay-marriage affected the presidency...

well I do think it did but it was amongg quite a few things and it was Democrats who upset the moderates and not just those that were conservative because they tried to push through such a change - and some may say for their own personal political careers and not out of the good of their hearts.

-Rudey

I doubt that Mayor Newsom thought that this would have the negative effect on gays that people like Barney Franks believe happened. He was probably just too blinded by the photo op.

Nothing to do with the topic at hand, but I love how Limbaugh is calling out Kerry and his ilk for "not practicing their religion except during campaigning" when it's been shown that both Kerry and Clinton, at least (I don't know about the rest he's named) go to church far more often than George W. Bush.