MAYOR GAVIN NEWSOM (1967–)

 

Usually homophobic bigotry is just accepted, but sometimes, as in the case of the Stonewall riots, it inspires historic change. Similarly, in late 2003, the Supreme Court of Massachusetts found in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health that it was against that state’s constitution to allow only heterosexual couples to marry. In his 2004 inaugural address, President George W. Bush reacted. He criticized the decision of “activist judges” and proclaimed, “If judges insist on forcing their arbitrary will upon the people, the only alternative left to the people would be the constitutional process. Our nation must defend the sanctity of marriage.”

Gavin Newsom, then the thirty-seven-year-old mayor of San Francisco (and currently lieutenant governor of California), was in the audience when President Bush called for a federal marriage amendment. On February 12, a few weeks later, Mayor Newsom directed the city clerk to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. More than four thousand marriage licenses were issued from February 12 until March 11, when the California Supreme Court issued a stay, pending court review of the legality of Newsom’s actions.

After the California Supreme Court agreed that banning same-sex marriage was not compatible with the state constitution, a voter referendum in 2008 known as Proposition 8 again outlawed the marriages. On June 26, 2013, a 5–4 US Supreme Court majority ruled that the proponents of Proposition 8 had no standing to continue appeals to defy the state’s constitution—and effectively wiped away an earlier court of appeals ruling in the proposition’s favor. In these excerpts from an interview on CNN, Newsom lays out the justification for his historic actions.