Wednesday, February 25, 2004

California Politics: Schwarzenegger and Gay Marriage (2 of 7)

Continuing with Schwarzenegger and Russert on Meet the Press:

But you know, I felt very strongly that it has to be done now, because it started out as a little thing, so I didn't say anything at the beginning.  Then it got to be a bigger issue and a bigger issue, and then yesterday, when I was in San Francisco for the Republican convention, all of a sudden we see riots and we see protests and we see people clashing.  The next thing we know is there are injured or there are dead people, and we don't want to have that.  We don't want to get to that extent, so we want to resolve it, and that's what leadership is all about is let's solve the problems, and then let's go to court and the court can make this decisions.

MR. RUSSERT:  If need be, would you call out the California State Police to arrest city officials in order to stop them from doing this?

GOV. SCHWARZENEGGER:  I don't think there will be a need for that, Tim.  I think that it will be resolved.  I think we have a great attorney general, Bill Lockyer, and I think that he will take care of it.  I think that we have a good system here, a good communication also between the mayor's office and my office.  I've talked to the mayor.  He's a reasonable guy.  He's a terrific mayor, but we just disagree on that particular thing.

This is worth breaking down a bit. The gay marriages themselves are a form of civil disobedience, in this case condoned by Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco, who is consciously setting up a court challenge based on what he calls the contradiction between the state constitution's guarantee of equal rights and the law prohibiting gay marriage.

Gov. Schwarzenegger, on the other hand, not only criticizes him for doing it. He goes on national television and compares this to issuing licenses for assault weapons or for selling drugs. Look at the wedding photos from San Francisco. Do any of those people look like victims of an Uzi attack?

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