E-Mail This Article to a Friend Party politics (continued)

NOT EVERYONE IS happy with Mayor Newsom’s decision. California senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer have both voiced disapproval of what they see as an illegitimate method of testing the validity of state law. Massachusetts congressman Barney Frank told the Associated Press this week that he feared "San Francisco being in sort of a free-for-all will be used against us politically." And Arline Isaacson, who has tirelessly lobbied on Beacon Hill for gay rights for more than two decades, expressed fear of a backlash when she told the Boston Globe this week: "What happened in San Francisco has not helped us at all. And it arguably made things worse here."

This is what you would expect to hear from senators, representatives, and lobbyists. This is what they have to say (and may even believe). But such fears don’t in any way invalidate the staggering effect of what’s happening in San Francisco. It is clearly no accident that, within days of Newsom’s mayoral order, Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley said he agreed with Newsom’s decision and would, if he had the authority, issue marriage licenses to lesbian and gay couples as well. On February 20, Victoria Dunlap, the clerk of Sandoval County, New Mexico, began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples after the county attorney said state law defines marriage as an agreement between contracting parties but does not mention sex. Licenses were granted to 26 couples before New Mexico attorney general Patricia Madrid issued an opinion saying the licenses were ‘invalid under state law.’" And while the Netherlands and Belgium both allow same-sex marriage, who ever thought that Cambodia would be open to the idea? On February 19, Cambodia’s 81-year-old King Norodom Sihanouk announced — after seeing news footage of gay marriages in San Francisco — that he would support same-sex marriage in his country because he had "respect" for homosexuals and "God loves a wide variety of tastes."

The brilliance of Newsom’s move is that he removed the battle for same-sex-marriage rights from the legal realm and placed it squarely within the sphere of social opinion. While progress has been made in the legal fight for same-sex marriage — in Massachusetts, the Supreme Judicial Court declared it to be a constitutional right, as did the Supreme Courts of Hawaii and Vermont (although the implementation of those decisions was circumvented by a constitutional amendment forbidding it in the former case, and a civil-union bill that replaced it in the latter) — it has always been argued as an abstract right. Now, thanks to Newsom, this debate is rooted in the here and now.

The city of San Francisco has sued the state of California, arguing that the law prohibiting gay and lesbian couples from marrying violates the state constitution. If the Golden State’s highest court finds that these weddings have indeed violated the state constitution, it will have to order 3000-plus couples to divorce. (Massachusetts will face the same prospect if the legislature and public eventually pass a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages — which cannot happen until November 2006 at the earliest — after the first of these weddings takes place this May.) The method by which Newsom challenged the implicit discrimination in California’s state laws created a cultural context in which the world can see the alternative to what exists now. Gavin Newsom knew — of course, he must have known — that by permitting same-sex marriage, San Francisco would become a 24-hour wedding party/carnival/playground. The effect of his gambit is amazing. Not only does it generate great press, it also shows that the world doesn’t fall apart because there is same-sex marriage, that it actually looks like a better, more fun place in which to live. And indeed — as if on plan — most of the reporting about the anti-same-sex-marriage protesters usually casts them as disgruntled, wet-blanket party poopers.

Politics is often described as "the art of the possible," and San Francisco has shown the world that, well, gay marriage is possible. Gavin Newsom and his city have taken the national debate on same-sex marriage and turned it into a brilliant piece of political theater. Just as José Sarria used drag to bring gay politics into the light, the hippies and the flower children staged love-ins as a stunning alternative to the war against Vietnam, and the drag queens and leather folk used costumes to show that gender and sex didn’t have to be what you thought they were in high school, Newsom’s simple decision to allow same-sex marriage unleashed a fabulous vision of what the world could be like — a more moving and effective display of political power than any formal debate could ever achieve.

Michael Bronski’s most recent book is Pulp Friction: Uncovering the Golden Age of Gay Male Pulps (St. Martin’s Press, 2003). He can be reached at mabronski@aol.com