California Lieutenant Governor Gavin
Newsom has called recent progress on gay marriage “unbelievable.”
Newsom's involvement in the issue goes
back more than a decade.
In 2003, then-San Francisco Mayor
Newsom ordered city hall clerks to issue marriage licenses to gay and
lesbian couples in violation of state law. Several thousand gay
couples were married during the “winter of love,” but eventually
the California Supreme Court ordered the city to stop and invalidated
all the marriages.
During an appearance on Larry King
Now, Newsom, 45, told host Larry King that he never thought he
would hear in his lifetime a sitting president endorse marriage
equality as President Barack Obama has.
“It's extraordinary to see that
progress,” Newsom said in reference to increasing
Republican support on the issue.
“I'm all for incrementalism in some
ways but not when it comes to fundamental human rights, civil rights.
And we have to be as bold as the problem is big. To deny people the
ability to live their lives out loud and to fall in love and express
that love and devotion and faith to one another was something that
upset me. And I just didn't like the timid nature of my party on
it.” (The video is embedded on this page. Visit
our video library for more videos.)