San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom on the Democratic Party’s faint heart on same-sex marriage:
Rolling Stone: Listening to the Democratic opposition to the federal anti-gay marriage amendment, the party’s senators sounded more like Dixiecrats — talking about marriage as a states’s rights issue — rather than Democrats, pursuing this from a civil-rights perspective.
Gavin Newsom: Where’s the moral courage? It’s lost. I have the luxury of saying this from San Francisco, I certainly respect what it’s like saying this in parts of Kentucky or North Carolina, but also believe this issue won’t go away for the Democratic party we stand up on historic principles.
We’ve never run the 90-yard dash on equality — ever. The history of this party is civil rights, women’s rights, human rights, labor rights, gay and lesbian rights. And for us to hold up civil unions and say that separate is somehow now equal — when just a-year-and-a-half we ago celebrated the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board — is transparent to the people. They see through the Democrats.
