The Mayor Who Thought He Was King by Aughtry Cooper(2004)
REUTERS/Kimberly White
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I don't know what it is about San Francisco mayors, but somehow they get overwhelmed with power or at least the ones that I have known do. The latest is the good mayor Gavin Newsom. He performed 4000 plus same-sex marriages in violation of California law or so they say.
Now let me say from the beginning, I'm not against same-sex marriages. I think we need more love in the world; and, if two men want to love each other in the Biblical way (sorry fundamentalists for using a Biblical reference), well, more power to them, but let's don't be kissing in public.
Plus, we have got to figure out, along with the Bible thumpers, how to keep the lesbians from getting a free pass since the Bible doesn't mention them.
The mayor probably performed these same-sex marriages not so much because he wanted to put a face on discrimination; but, I think, he mainly did it to distinguish himself from the former mayor, Willy Brown. Now, Willy was the master politico. The guy could get elected, let's face it, to almost anything. He single-handedly ran the California legislature for years until term limits forced him out. And, most folks thought he was a crook, in terms of always appointing his buds to high paying positions and collecting big time campaign contributions, but nobody ever penned anything on him.
AP Photo/Noah Berger
| Willy could get away with shenanigans that would jail most other people. For instance, he had a young thing often on his arm; and, when she came up pregnant with Willy's child, nobody as much as raised an eyebrow. Willy was almost as good at getting a pass in this area as Jessie Jackson. Jesse, a self-proclaimed minister
and civil rights activist, also had a child out of wedlock.
Anyway, the good mayor, Gavin Newsom, needed to make his own place in the sun. How did he do it? Well, he performed a spectacular gesture embracing the largest voting block in the city, the gay community. He performed some gay marriages, got national attention, and the people immediately said, "Willy Who?" Now, of course, he performed the marriage from a weighted down conscious and not some self-serving motive. Right? Where is your faith?
The State Supreme Court said the marriages. were invalidated-this sounded very cold to me. Butgay marriage issues aside, I think that Mayor Newsom's grand act cemented again the idea that San Francisco is like some island unto itself: a city where the bizarre is normal.
Gestures like the mayor made, with, in my opinion, suspect motives, makes all of us San Franciscans appear as chai tea sipping left coasters who have never darkened the door of a Wal-Mart. Really, we are not a bunch (some are) of leftover, Birkenstock wearing hippie residents of Sodom and Gomorrah, I don't think. But I do know living in San Francisco is a wild and crazy experience.
Take a look back at the articles from Life in Frisco series:
Thank Vietnam For Introducing Me To The City
Too Many Cars, Too Few Parking Spaces
Buses Of the Haves and Have
In North Carolina, I Thought Gay Meant Happy
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