San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has ended his campaign to be governor of California. In a press release, Newsom pointed to his family as the reason.

“With a young family and responsibilities at City Hall, I have found it impossible to commit the time required to complete this effort the way it needs to – and should be – done,” the mayor said.

There is  suggestion, however, that the real reasons are because there was no grondswell for Newsom and donors were not willing to give up cash.

More about this later.

A Democratic assemblyman who heckled the governor during a recent event in San Francisco actually received two messages: the veto letter itself and a not-so-subtle rebuke creatively hidden within it.

Like a find-the-word puzzle, the second message was visible by stringing together the first letter of each line down the left-hand margin. It consisted of a common four-letter vulgarity followed by the letters “y-o-u.”

“My goodness. What a coincidence,” said Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear. “I suppose when you do so many vetoes, something like this is bound to happen.”

Schwarzenegger’s veto messages are sent to the lawmakers who authored the bills, and posted on the governor’s Web site. McLear noted that the left-hand margin of past veto messages has spelled out words such as “poet” and “soap.”

The target was San Francisco Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, who had sponsored AB1176. The bill, which passed unanimously in the Assembly and Senate, would have granted the Port of San Francisco expanded financing power to redevelop a former shipyard into a new neighborhood known as Pier 70.

“Kudos to the governor for his creative use of coincidence,” said Ammiano’s spokesman, Quintin Mecke. “You certainly have to have a sense of humor in politics. Unfortunately, this humor came at the cost of the Port of San Francisco.”

Whether coincidence or smackdown, the phrase contained in Schwarzenegger’s Oct. 12 veto message could be seen as retaliation for Ammiano’s behavior during a local Democratic Party fundraiser earlier this month in San Francisco.

Schwarzenegger, a Republican, had been invited to the event by former San Francisco mayor and Assembly speaker Willie Brown, a Democrat.

His appearance at the Fairmont Hotel caught many of the attendees by surprise and came after a summer of contentious budget negotiations that forced lawmakers to cut billions of dollars from core state services, including education and health care programs.

On a video clip of the governor’s appearance, Ammiano can be heard shouting “you lie” and other derogatory phrases as other attendees booed and heckled Schwarzenegger’s brief speech.

After the governor left, Ammiano took the stage and gave a rambling diatribe in which he criticized Schwarzenegger for a wide variety of perceived offenses. In part, the freshman lawmaker was upset that Schwarzenegger had vetoed bills in 2005 and 2007 that would have legalized gay marriage.

The governor has said the issue should be decided by voters or the state Supreme Court. Schwarzenegger also opposed Proposition 8, the initiative voters passed in November to ban same-sex marriage.

Of the eight Ammiano bills sent to the governor’s desk this year, Schwarzenegger vetoed six – five of them after the Oct. 7 heckling incident.

Mecke, Ammiano’s spokesman, said the lawmaker wants to move on.

“We will call it even and start with a clean slate with the governor from here on out,” he said.

U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn Walker also signaled Wednesday that the measure’s sponsors will need to show that allowing gay couples to wed threatens traditional male-female unions.

Walker said significant questions remain about whether the voter-approved ban discriminates against gays and lesbians in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

Before ruling, Walker grilled a lawyer for the measure’s backers who asserted that Proposition 8 was legitimate because it fostered “naturally procreative relationships.”

The judge demanded to hear how that goal would be undermined if same-sex marriages were legal.

Anyone voicing hateful or violent rhetoric, she told reporters, must take responsibility for the results.

“I have concerns about some of the language that is being used because I saw this myself in the late ’70s in San Francisco,” Pelosi said, suddenly speaking quietly. “This kind of rhetoric was very frightening” and created a climate in which violence took place, she said.

Former San Francisco Supervisor Dan White was convicted of the 1978 murders of Mayor George Moscone and openly gay supervisor Harvey Milk. Gay rights activists and some others at the time saw a link between the assassinations and the violent debate over gay rights that had preceded them for years.

During a rambling confession, White was quoted as saying, “I saw the city as going kind of downhill.” His lawyers argued that he was mentally ill at the time. White committed suicide in 1985.

Pelosi is part of a generation of California Democrats on whom the assassinations had a searing effect. A resident of San Fransisco, Pelosi had been a Democratic activist for years and knew Milk and Moscone. At the time of their murders, she was serving as chairwoman of her party in the northern part of the state.

On Thursday, Pelosi was answering a question about whether the current vitriol concerned her. The questioner did not refer to the murders of Milk or Moscone, or the turmoil in San Francisco three decades ago. Pelosi referenced those events on her own and grew uncharacteristically emotional.

“I wish that we would all, again, curb our enthusiasm in some of the statements that are made,” Pelosi said. Some of the people hearing the message “are not as balanced as the person making the statement might assume,” she said.

“Our country is great because people can say what they think and they believe,” she added. “But I also think that they have to take responsibility for any incitement that they may cause.”

Pelosi’s office did not immediately respond to a request for examples of contemporary statements that reminded the speaker of the rhetoric of 1970s San Francisco.

The public anger during health care town hall meetings in August spilled into the House last week when South Carolina Republican Joe Wilson shouted “You lie!” at Obama, the nation’s first black president, during his speech. On a largely party-line vote, the House reprimanded Wilson.

Call it a cultural confluence, call it a comeback. Now 54 and the closest the gay rights movement has to a living legend, the former protege to a political martyr and creator of the AIDS Memorial Quilt is busily planning his next act – a march on the nation’s capital that he hopes will usher in the final era in his community’s struggle for acceptance.

“There was a time when I thought I would never be happy again,” Jones says, standing barefoot in the tiki-torched yard of the California desert bungalow where he has lived since 1999 but is rarely home long enough to enjoy. “I feel so connected to the movement again.”

That he feels compelled to comment on his good fortune says a lot about the twists Jones’ own life took after 1978, the year openly gay San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk was assassinated.

Culture watchers will remember that Jones, the 23-year-old City Hall intern portrayed in “Milk,” went on to create the 47,000-panel quilt that humanized the lives lost to AIDS. Less widely known is that during the decade he spent weaving one of the world’s largest folk art projects into the nation’s fabric, Jones was preparing to die himself.

Instead, he became one of the AIDS epidemic’s earliest survivors.

“If I’d known I was going to live this long, I would have saved money and joined a gym,” laughs Jones, who shows the puckish sense of humor actor Emile Hirsch exhibited as his on-screen alter-ego.

When talk turns to the National Equality March scheduled for the second week of October in Washington, however, Jones turns serious.

His goal is to build an army of activists drawn from each of the nation’s 435 congressional districts. Afterward, participants will be sent home to pressure their representatives and the White House into removing the remaining barriers to gay equality, such as the policy that prevents gays from serving openly in the military.

If successful, Jones’ vision would represent a sea change in the gay rights movement’s strategy of securing victories piecemeal on the local or state level.

“We got locked into this pattern of fighting for fractions of crumbs – ‘Oh please, sir, in this county could we please not be fired for being gay if it’s all right in this county for you to evict us for being gay?’” he says. “It’s been this ping-pong with our basic civil rights….If you are a free and equal people, why would you settle for this?”

Jones agreed to organize the march at the urging of veteran activist David Mixner, who proposed it as a way to lobby President Barack Obama to follow through on his campaign promises.

“When he has a sense of righteousness about a mission, he has a tenacity I have rarely seen,” said Mixner, who has known Jones since the 1970s. “He is not a person who has ever put himself before the mission.”

Many gay leaders quickly dismissed the march idea as a waste of time and money. Jones took to the Internet and the gay political circuit to address the nay-sayers.

During more than 35 years of activism, friends and associates say that Jones has weathered criticism before.

In 1986, when he was trying to amass support for a giant quilt stitched by people who lost loved ones to AIDS, even fellow activists refused to get on board, according to Jones. Many saw the project as a morbid endeavor that would distract them from the serious work of persuading the government to invest in AIDS research.

Jones persisted. The NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt is now recognized as not only a powerful symbol of loss, but a turning point in the public’s perception of the disease.

“I thought who is going to grieve the most when I die? It’s going to be my family – my parents, my little sister and my grandmothers. I wanted a place in this movement for my grandmothers,” he says.

With his health waning, Jones in 1990 relinquished control of the quilt to a nonprofit foundation that eventually moved the 54-ton quilt to Atlanta. He continued to serve as its public face until five years ago, when tensions between him and the foundation’s new leadership bubbled over with his firing and an unsuccessful wrongful termination suit.

In recent years, Jones has worked as a gay community liason for the national hotel workers union, an outgrowth of his activism.

He credits Milk, the middle-aged camera store owner turned politician, with transforming him from a shy and somewhat aimless young hippie into a committed activist unafraid to use his voice or to be open about his sexuality.

“Harvey was never a shadow to me. He was an inspiration, a light. His biggest gift to me was to not fear straight people,” he said.

Jones’ determination not to let Milk’s legacy fade was key in getting the movie made, said screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, who won an Oscar for his work on the film. Jones served as the movie’s historical adviser.

“Cleve never lost his belief in the power of the grass roots,” Black says. “I remember when I first met him, over those first few years of research and even when shooting ‘Milk’ he would say, ‘What is your generation doing? I can’t imagine how empty it must be not to have a really strong generational purpose.’”

In Jones, Black sees an heir to Milk’s role as an inspirational leader. “Milk” opened last November just before the 30th anniversary of Milk’s assassination and just after California voters passed a ballot measure rescinding the right to wed the state Supreme Court had granted gays five months earlier.

For weeks, young activists protested in major cities across the country.

“I saw this man’s eyes light up in a way I had never seen,” Black says of Jones. “I saw him come to life when the young people started to rise up. I think he recognized in them a purpose he hadn’t seen since his own days with Harvey Milk.”

Cleve Jones said the march planned for Oct. 11 will coincide with National Coming Out Day and launch a new chapter in the gay rights movement. He made the announcement during a rally at the annual Utah Pride Festival.

“We seek nothing more and nothing less than equal protection in all matters governed by civil law in all 50 states,” Jones said.

He stirred up a crowd of thousands just blocks from the Salt Lake City headquarters of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, part of a conservative coalition that worked last fall to pass California’s Proposition 8, which overturned a court ruling legalizing gay marriage.

“I’ve got a message for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” Jones shouted. “I’ve got two words from California … I’ve got two words for the prophet … Thank you. Thank you for uniting us. Thank you for galvanizing us.”

Mormons were among the campaign’s most vigorous volunteers and financial contributors, giving tens of millions of dollars to back Proposition 8, which Jones said has helped awaken and unite the gay rights movement in all 50 states.

Like many faiths, Mormons hold traditional marriage as a sacred institution. The church has been active in fighting marriage equality legislation across the U.S. since the 1990s and, in 2006, joined other faiths in asking Congress for a marriage amendment to the Constitution.

Gay marriage is legal in six states. A handful of others allow civil unions for same-sex couples and about 40 either bar the recognition of same-sex marriage or have explicitly defined marriage – through legislation or constitutional amendments – as between a man and a woman.

Jones was a protege of Milk, San Francisco’s first openly gay elected official, who was shot and killed by a fellow member of the Board of Supervisors in 1978. In the mid-80s Jones founded the NAMES Project, the AIDS memorial quilt that recognizes the more than 80,000 Americans who have died from HIV/AIDS.

In an interview Friday, he said a confluence of events – a new president, the success of the movie “Milk” and Proposition 8 – makes this the right time to intensify the fight for equality.

Since November, Jones said he has received hundreds of e-mails from Latter-day Saints who apologized and said they were uncomfortable or ashamed by the faith’s fight against Proposition 8.

“It’s unfortunate that a church and a people who experienced persecution in the past could not come to some accommodation that would allow them to maintain their faith without so vociferously seeking to deny other people their rights,” Jones said.

The state Supreme Court’s decision to uphold California’s constitutional ban on gay marriage – and the prospect that an impassioned initiative to overturn it could share the ballot with next year’s governor’s race – holds consequences for candidates from both parties, but especially for the one most deeply associated with the issue.

The intensity of a statewide vote on same-sex marriage could make it difficult for Newsom to connect with centrist voters, millions of whom voted no on the issue last year.

“It certainly underlines Gavin Newsom’s previous advocacy for same-sex marriage. I think that might be a two-edged sword for him,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the San Francisco-based Field Poll.

Other possible Democratic contenders including Attorney General Jerry Brown, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Lt. Gov. John Garamendi also support same-sex marriage. So does one of the three leading Republican hopefuls, former U.S. Rep. Tom Campbell, but former eBay chief executive Meg Whitman and state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner oppose it.

GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger cannot run for re-election next year because of term limits.

Despite their liberal image, California voters have told pollsters repeatedly that they are divided over gay marriage. Even as they handed Democrat Barack Obama a 24-point win last November over Republican John McCain, they voted 52 percent in favor of Proposition 8, which overturned a state Supreme Court ruling earlier in the year that made same-sex weddings legal.

“If (Newsom) were to be the nominee, it would dominate the mainstream, the thinking of most voters, especially those outside the party who may not hold as sympathetic a perception of gay marriage,” DiCamillo said.

Two groups, Equality California and the Courage Campaign, are beginning to coalesce behind a 2010 initiative rather than waiting until 2012. They are targeting the same demographics Newsom will have to win, starting with voters in the Central Valley, one of California’s most conservative regions.

The area was largely ignored during the failed 2008 campaign against Proposition 8 and is among the regions where Newsom has the least support. Nearly 69 percent of Fresno County voters favored Proposition 8.

Newsom already has been touring the valley and stopping in other moderate to conservative areas, such as San Diego, in a bid to expand his appeal outside the San Francisco Bay area.

During an April town-hall-style event in Fresno, Newsom joked about newspaper editorials that questioned his bid for governor.

“They all said, ‘Good luck when you go to Fresno.’ The issue of marriage equality … you can’t win. The state rejects it,” Newsom said. “I didn’t do it because I waited for a public opinion poll to decide what my values were. I said I’m open to argument, always, but I believe in equality.”

Some supporters argue that Newsom can turn a 2010 ballot initiative seeking to repeal Proposition 8 to his advantage.

Geoffrey Kors, executive director of Equality California, said if the 41-year-old Newsom is the Democratic nominee, he would draw younger, progressive voters who support same-sex marriage.

“Every one of the Democrats running for governor is a supporter of full equality, but clearly Gavin has done a great deal for the cause, at great political risk,” Kors said.

The group has not endorsed a candidate.

Democratic strategist Chris Lehane said every politician wants to be known as a courageous leader, but few ever get the opportunity to lead on an issue of major importance and then follow through.

“I do think he accomplished that on the gay marriage issue. If he can use that to drive his platform of, that’s who he is at his core, then that could be tremendously powerful,” Lehane said.

Bill Carrick, a Democratic consultant in California, said Republicans would do well to stay away from the gay marriage issue, no matter who the Democratic nominee is in 2010. Otherwise, he said, they’ll risk further alienating young voters who already are turning away from the party.

“Ever since we have been moving from Ronald Reagan’s red state California to Barack Obama’s blue state California, social issues have been just a whole bunch of land mines that have caused enormous political trouble for Republicans,” Carrick said.

Mike Spence, president of the California Republican Assembly, said gay marriage will be an issue in 2010 whether it’s on the ballot or not, so GOP candidates should not shy away from it. The group is a conservative wing of the state GOP.

“On this specific issue, a majority of Californians agree with us. There’s never a downside to that,” Spence said.

Another factor potentially working in the Democratic nominee’s favor, whether it’s Newsom or someone else, is California’s changing electorate.

Just 31 percent of registered California voters are Republicans, while nearly 45 percent are Democrats and 20 percent are independents. That means it’s important for Republicans to reach independent voters, who tend to be more supportive of gay marriage than California as a whole.

A Field Poll survey in March found that nonpartisans favored gay marriage by 55 percent to 42 percent, while voters overall were evenly split on the issue.

Newsom is taking a moderate approach to the Supreme Court ruling that upheld Proposition 8. In the days after the decision, he appeared in one-on-one television interviews rather than at gay marriage rallies, as he has before.

A videotaped clip of his impassioned exclamation in 2004 that the door was open to gay marriage – “Whether you like it or not” – became a focal point of last year’s anti-gay marriage campaign.

“I’ll never say that again. I learned my lesson,” Newsom told the town hall crowd in Fresno. “I’ve got to be more humble.”

Several dozen couples turned up at the court Thursday morning after the blogosphere erupted with rumors and speculation the decision would be coming down.

The court has a 90-day self-imposed turnaround rule in issuing rulings after oral arguments in a case are heard. Rulings are handed down on Mondays and Thursdays.

That leaves just three more days for the court to issue its decision.  With the Memorial Day holiday on Monday, rulings scheduled for that day will be released on Tuesday, or the decision could come on Thursday.  The final day under the rule would be June 1.

Prop 8 was passed by voters in November by a slim 52 percent. The initiative by conservative groups bans same-sex marriage in the state.

The American Civil Liberties Union, Lambda Legal and the National Center for Lesbian Rights immediately filed lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the vote.  They were joined by additional suits by the cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles and a legal opinion by California Attorney General Jerry Brown.

The Supreme Court heard the case on March 5.

For the court there are three issues to be determined: Is Proposition 8 invalid because it constitutes a revision of, rather than an amendment to, the California Constitution?; Does Proposition 8 violate the separation of powers doctrine under the California Constitution?; and If Proposition 8 is not unconstitutional, what is its effect, if any, on the marriages of same-sex couples performed before the adoption of Proposition 8?

Arguing for the litigants was Shannon Minter, the NCLR attorney who earlier successfully argued the gay marriage case before the high court.

Minter told the court that Prop 8 should be ruled invalid because the initiative process was improperly used in an attempt to undo the constitution’s core commitment to equality for everyone.

He also argued that Proposition 8 improperly attempted to prevent the courts from exercising their essential constitutional role of protecting the equal protection rights of minorities.

Minter said that under the California Constitution, such radical changes to the organizing principles of state government cannot be made by a simple majority vote through the initiative process, but instead must, at a minimum, go through the state legislature first.

The California Constitution establishes two ways that it can be altered. A substantial change to the principles or basic structure of the constitution, called a “revision,” requires the involvement of the legislature and a more deliberative process. A less substantial change, called an “amendment,” can be enacted by a simple majority vote of the people.

The California Supreme Court should strike down Proposition 8 because it is, in fact, a revision, Minter argued.

The principle of equal protection, which prevents the majority from oppressing minority groups, is central to our constitution and our democratic system of government. Proposition 8 would limit that fundamental principle of equality for LGBT Californians and undermine the very purpose of equal protection for everybody he told the court.

Attorney Christopher Krueger, representing California Attorney General Jerry Brown, told the court his office disagreed with Minter’s argument that Prop 8 was an improper revision of the constitution. But Krueger said the measure should still be struck down.

Krueger argued that Prop 8 was unconstitutional because it conflicted with an “inalienable right” to liberty that the state Supreme Court found last year included the right of same-sex couples to marry.

Representing the conservative groups behind Prop 8 was Kenneth Starr who led the inquiry into President Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky.

Starr argued that the will of the people must be respected by the court saying the groups challenging Prop 8 wanted the court to ignore  “inalienable right” of the people to change the constitution.

“The people do have the raw power to define the rights,” Starr told the court. “We govern ourselves – and we may govern ourselves unwisely.”

He also argued that the measure also invalidated the 18,000 same-sex marriages between the time gay marriage was declared legal and voters went to the polls in November.

Two separate groups are not taking any chances should the court fail to overturn Prop 8 and are preparing voter measures to overturn it in 2010.

The California Secretary of State has given the group Yes on Equality until August 17 to collect the nearly 700,000 signatures needed to qualify its initiative for the 2010 ballot. It would ask voters to repeal Prop 8. The other, by two college students, would strike the word “marriage” from all state laws.

©365Gay.com 2009

Why?

He was afraid of it coinciding with the 30th anniversary of the San Francisco White Night riots, which were held when the court sentenced Dan White, who murdered Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone, was given the most lenient sentence possible: voluntary manslaughter.

Smart call on Newsom’s part most likely – it’s easy to imagine another riot after the massive Prop 8 protests of November. But I bet the Supreme Court was probably hoping that people would have their reactions muted by the long holiday weekend.

And – I’m really anxious to hear. I’m not hopeful, but I just want to know the decision, so we can move on to the next step.