February 24, 2004

Gay Marriage, Illegal Alien Sanctuaries: The New Face Of The Lawless Left

I watched Gavin Newsom, outlaw-in-chief of San Francisco, on Larry King Live last week. With his slicked-back hair and silk tie, the 36-year-old mayor is the perfect model for the Radical Left’s Extreme Makeover.

Out: Drug-addled, draft card-burning, Molotov cocktail-tossing, campus protesters of the 1960s.

In: Merlot-sipping, gay marriage license-peddling, cocktail party-throwing, pretty boys in elected office.

Mayor Newsom looks like a little like Ben Affleck and talks a lot like Bill Clinton. He’s got a trophy wife with three names (former lingerie model Kimberly Guilfoyle Newsom) and a five-point government plan for everything from renewable energy (“Expedite implementation of San Francisco’s solar energy bond”) to homelessness (“Care Not Cash” and “office-based opiate addiction treatment”) to “aging with dignity” (“I will support Adult Day Health Care”) . Newsom knows better than you. He feels your pain (if you’re a member of a politically correct minority group).

And he’s all for paying lip service to the rule of law except when it gets in the way of “diversity.”

When Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, the Colorado Republican sponsoring a federal marriage amendment, bluntly confronted Newsom with his criminal behavior (“I'm going through the deliberative legislative process, Mr. Mayor. You're defying the law.”), he pursed his lips and snorted: “I'm hardly defying the law.”

Hardly? Fact: In 2000, California voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 22, the state’s Defense of Marriage Act. Despite Newsom’s issuance of 3,500 marriage licenses to homosexual couples, Prop. 22 remains the law today.

Musgrave didn’t back down: “You're making a mockery of the law.” Newsom wheedled in response: “I think you're making a mockery of this country and our values of diversity, and bringing people together and uniting people.”

Newsom has inspired leftists in government positions across the country to violate their oaths of office in order to “bring people together.” The 26-year-old mayor of New Paltz, N.Y., Jason West, has issued marriage licenses to 21 gay couples in his village. [VDARE.COM Update: He’s now facing charges under New York State Law, as a result.]

Ithaca Mayor Carolyn K. Peterson said her city will now accept marriage licenses from same-sex couples. Ditto Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. The mayors of Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, and Plattsburgh, N.Y., have all chimed in support of Newsom’s urban guerilla tactics.

Many astute observers have noted the media elite’s double standard in covering the liberal Newsom’s defiance of California’s marriage law (he’s praised a pioneer) versus conservative Alabama judge Roy Moore’s defiance of a federal court order to remove the Ten Commandments from his courthouse (he’s condemned as a zealot).

But this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Saboteurs in three-piece suits have been making mincemeat of the rule of law on a daily basis without so much as a shrug from the anti-Roy Moore watchdogs. Where’s their outrage over the open-borders zealots on city councils and in police departments in San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles and New York, which have openly defied federal immigration law and declared their cities sanctuaries for illegal aliens?

Where’s the condemnation of California and Washington state public university officials, who continue to openly defy state laws—passed overwhelmingly by the voters through the initiative and referendum process—outlawing racially discriminatory affirmative action policies?

And where’s the alarm over politicians nationwide enacting local resolutions to undermine federal anti-terrorism efforts?

The city council of Arcata, Calif., has made it a crime for government employees to comply with requests made under the Patriot Act. Just last week, Dallas passed a resolution condemning the Patriot Act that gives the city’s law enforcement officials “political and professional cover” to resist federal orders related to the law. New York City’s anti-Patriot Act resolution likewise urges cops to refrain from threat profiling and to resist cooperating with homeland security authorities.

The shiny pied pipers of the lawless Left are leading us to drown in societal chaos.

Oh, well. At least we’ll have “diversity.”

Michelle Malkin [email her] is author of Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores. Click here for Peter Brimelow’s review. Click here for Michelle Malkin's website.