GAYS DEFEND MARRIAGE

So San Francisco’s mayor and adulterer-in-chief Gavin Newsom has expressed shock and outrage that San Diego County might allow clerks with religious or moral objections to let another clerk “marry” same-sex couples next month.

(I think it’s really interesting that Newsom and Eliot Spitzer have been perhaps the two most prominent straight elected officials backing marriage equality, given that neither one has any business telling the rest of us what marriage is.)

Newsom suggested that clerks who don’t feel comfortable “marrying” same-sex couples should lose their jobs.

Let me remind you, Mr. Mayor, that supporters of man-woman marriage range along a broad spectrum in terms of our attitudes toward protections and legal recognition for same-sex couples. Some of us would like to see a compromise in which same-sex partners get the right to hospital visitation and inheritance, for example. Others don’t want to give an inch to radical gay activists who have been trying to destroy a central societal institution. Given that supporters of man-woman marriage are in the majority both in California and nationwide, Newsom and his allies would be smart to be flexible and compassionate in the short five months during which the law is on his side, because when the law is not on his side beginning in November, he’s probably going to want man-woman marriage defenders to be flexible and compassionate.

Threatening to fire people who took their jobs as clerks during a time when “marrying” men to men and women to women was not part of the job description is neither flexible nor compassionate. If Newsom’s attitude prevails during the brief window of marriage equality, I know I’m certainly not going to be feeling charitable and eager to expend energy toward compromises in the future when same-sex couples ask for protections in various states after the California Marriage Protection Act passes.