Site Presented By
Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Salon readers debate the political significance of gay marriage in 2004.
Nov 6, 2004 | [Read "Did this man cost the Democrats the election?" by Joan Walsh.]
Yes Joan, Newsom was a major factor in Bush's GOTV effort. It's time for progressives who look to the Dems as a bulwark against radical conservatism to get real, real fast.
The difference between what happened in November of 2003 in Massachusetts and February of 2004 in San Francisco was not pointed out in your editorial. One was a legal court decision. I hail that. The other was a local official operating outside his authority in an attempt to expand state recognition of legal marriage. A very public overreach.
That's really what pissed people off. It pissed me off. This man had a responsibility to behave as if he recognized and respected the process, and not to hurt the cause. He chose to have a photo op instead, becoming a figure who would make history if only by thumbing his nose. Progressives of that ilk rarely accomplish more than a short-term adrenaline rush of high-profile quixotic political adventure.
That might work fine for San Francisco. The city might do well by attracting even more of the gay and lesbian community. They won't hurt for this. But what Newsom did drove a stake right into the heart of how mainstream Americans view the Democratic Party, and I can't forgive him for that lack of vision.
By the way, I am an active, I stress active, Catholic from an Irish-American background, who hopes that someday the definition of marriage will include same-sex couples. But living in Michigan, I am realistic about the long road ahead for people's core values to shift.
Our constitutional amendment banning legal recognition of same-sex marriages passed overwhelmingly. It may also, by its wording, roll back the rights civil unions by consequence. This is not just about John Kerry. A whole community here has in effect lost its legal rights.
By overreaching, Gavin Newsom set me and my community back, and might decimate the presence of such a vital, diverse, economically creative group of citizens here in Detroit. I might lose neighbors and friends who make the difference in my neighborhood. An exodus of that scale is truly a reason to mourn.
-- Edward Sweeney
Atlanta was coined "the city too busy to hate" during the Civil Rights movement. Of course, this title was a bunch of hooey -- there were plenty of folks with time on their hands to hate in the ATL. But what's significant about Atlanta's motto is that it was created and adopted by the city's white leaders, who realized that integration -- whether they wanted it or not -- was coming, and the smoother it went the better business would be.
Under the direction of Mayor Ivan Allen (a member of Atlanta's elite, white business community), Atlanta purposefully set into motion the handing over of city power from white leaders to African-American leaders. The one race riot that occurred during this time was quelled by the mayor himself. Because of Ivan Allen's leadership, Atlanta grew in leaps and bounds in the subsequent years, becoming the place to do business in the South, while neighboring Montgomery, once the size and stature of Atlanta, withered into a backwater because of its steadfast resistance to integration.
A controversial mayor at the time, Ivan Allen is now heralded as a visionary who saved Atlanta from cultural and economic insignificance. Though the two cities, San Francisco and Atlanta, have vastly different histories, Mayor Newsom, like Ivan Allen, will be widely viewed as a visionary in 20 years' time. He should be applauded for his stand on gay marriage, and for the benefit that his progressive stance offers to the business community of San Francisco. The Midwestern and Southern states, I fear, will continue to lose their best and brightest because those folks who might bring greater technology and innovation to the red states will instead flock to cities "too busy to hate," like our own city by the bay.
To blame Newsom and gay marriage for the loss of the 2004 election is to align ourselves with the unenlightened, and to stand in the way of progress itself. Fear and prejudice put up a terrible fight when they sense change coming. Let us not join their fight in a shortsighted attempt to appease the ignorant.
-- Susan White
