In San Francisco, One Day You're In, the Next, You're Down and Out!

Although I've been "Auf'd" from San Francisco's city limits, I still love the city. Today I finally found my favorite story that describes San Francisco's uniqueness.

As you may recall, I have one for Phoenix, where the soccer mom returns fire with the pistol from her purse when a gang opens fire on her husband and her on Baseline Road. I couldn't find a good one for San Francisco, until today.

In the comments to a story about Mayor Gavin Newsom being given an award by Time Magazine, a commenter posted this:

The East Coast media never quite gets a handle on San Francisco's uniqueness. I was visiting SFO once, and threw on some ratty clothes to go out and grab the morning newspaper. As I walked by a woman who had been sleeping in a store doorway, she looks me up and down and snorts: "Nice sweats!".

You gotta love a city where the homeless are fashion critics. And good ones, at that.

Yeah, any one of San Francisco's homeless could sit in as the guest judge on Project Runway, adroitly rip into the designers for their rotten fashion sense until they cry, hit up Heidi Klum for clean needles, shake down Michael Kors for change, read Nina Garcia for being a "snooty bitch", all while guzzling an "upscale" 40 in a "designer" paper bag, without breaking a sweat during the inevitable saturated burp.

Now that's San Francisco. Classy.

A New Addition to the Gay Lexicon

A new word was born this week. I don't know who started it, but Chris Jenson at the SF Examiner newspaper used it in his blog, the Gay Examiner.

He informs us that at least for the short term, he's developed a crush on Mayor Gavin Newsom. In fact, he'd gay-marry Gavin Newsom if Newsom would agree to a haircut and to use less product in his hair.

As a point of fact, Newsom does seem to be stuck in the late 90s, but somehow the look suits him. I'm not as worried as some of my other gay brethren if he sticks with the look.

Newsom relatively recently divorced his first wife and took a model as his second wife, so it is fairly certain that the mayor is a confirmed player on the other team. But I'm sure a lot of gay men have mini-crushes on Newsom this week, and probably a few lesbians, too.

Something happened at the Mayor's press conference Thursday that impressed me. One of the men making a short speech mentioned how good looking Newsom is. Newsom laughed, reached out and squeezed the man's shoulder by way of thanks for the compliment.

It's pretty refreshing to see a straight man who is so obviously comfortable around gays and lesbians. What a contrast to the national politicians. It brought to mind Barack Obama's hyperfear at being photographed with Newsom again.

I think that is going to be Obama's legacy with a lot of us in the gay community. He had a chance to be part of the latest civil rights movement, but he ducked his head and ran the other way. You can't shout about change and then disappear when the reality of change is inconvenient.

Do the Right Thing

The Advocate has an interesting article on San Francisco Mayor, Gavin Newsom, this month. It covers the reason he decided to allow gay marriages on February 12, 2004.

He had just returned from George Bush's inauguration in which Bush included in his speech his party's spew about the "sanctity of marriage" and protection of America from "activist" judges.

He told his staff to find a way to allow gays and lesbians to marry. They initially thought that they would marry a few couples. No one expected 4,000 couples to line up to be married in the one month that same-sex marriage was allowed in San Francisco.

The California Supreme Court is now deciding the fallout of the San Francisco marriages and whether the prohibition of marrage for same-sex couples is constitutional. The City of San Francisco is one of the parties in the combined litigation.

One of the arguments that the justices mentioned was whether the time is right to consider the question or whether gays and lesbians should be made to wait until the rest of the country catches up. Newsom's response is:

“When is the right time? There never is a right time. Mid-term congressional election? Not the right time -- we have a chance to take back the House. The next presidential election? Not the right time -- we have a chance to possibly win. It’s never the right time. We need to get over these stale arguments. If you believe in something, do it. And do it with conviction. And if you screw up, learn from it, admit your mistakes and failures, and move forward in a more thoughtful way.”

Newsom suffered political fall-out within his own party from his decision. Barack Obama asked him to throw fund raisers for him, but refused to be photographed with him in 2006 and again this election cycle. Other Democrats did much the same and worse following the 2004 marriages. Hillary Clinton is one of the few Democrats to have had pictures taken with Gavin Newsom.

It appears to gays and lesbians that Democrats think that they are fine for fund-raising, but they don't want to take any political risk where gay and lesbian issues are concerned. In demonstration of their lack of competence of gay and lesbian issues, they were shocked at the backlash from the LGBT community when the House passed a bill to extend the definition of hate crimes to include gays, lesbians and bisexuals, but not transgendered persons.

Barney Frank, the gay Congressman who sponsored the bill, felt that getting the vote through on 3 of the 4 groups was progress. It was politics over substance and the LGBT community knew it. There was no way the bill would get approved by the Senate nor signed by the President. It was a meaningless gesture and that was spoiled by Frank's and the Democratic majority's willingness to throw the transgender community to the wolves.

What the LGBT community understood was that it was another example of Democrats' political expediency by offering a meaningless bone to the community before a election fundraisers began. It would have been better to do nothing than to try to split the LGBT community's unity.

It is ironic that Republicans can stubbornly stand by their principles, at least on social issues, but Democrats continue to be moral cowards. Both Clinton and Obama do not support gay marriage equality for the LGBT community. They haven't the political cojones to deliver on what they profess to be one of the chief principles of their party: equality for minority groups.

Even as Obama talked about racial issues this past week, I couldn't overlook his moral cowardice on gay issues. It sounds hauntingly familiar to his fear of being photographed with Gavin Newsom.

Obama has never appeared at gay functions, so far as I can find. I can't think of a single photograph with him and any group of gay people. Instead, he sends his staff to talk to the gay community. He never addresses the community directly.

He claims to be supportive of gay rights. His campaign policies are perhaps a tad better than Clinton's. But is it just talk? With the Rev. Wright debate this past fortnight, gays and lesbians are reminded that most black churches have not been supportive of gays and lesbians, much less their rights.

In contrast, while Clinton doesn't support full gay marriage, she often appears with gay people and at gay functions. There isn't that nagging question of moral cowardice as with Obama, except on the gay marriage issue alone. She is politically expedient, but she has always been there to support gay rights in the Senate in every other respect. That is why gays and lesbians have continued to support Clinton over Obama even if we wished she had the cojones to support gay marriage.

All the more reason to enjoy the refreshing breeze from someone like Gavin Newsom who believes in doing the right thing because it is the right thing to do. How sad it is that it used to be the rule instead of the exception in the American polity.