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
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