This essay is excerpted from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s new memoir, “Younger Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery.”
On January 20, 2004, I took a seat within the gallery of the Home of Representatives to listen to President Bush ship his State of the Union tackle. The seat got here courtesy of Home Minority Chief Nancy Pelosi. Ten months earlier, Bush had made the choice to invade Iraq after his administration’s historic marketing campaign of lies satisfied the American people who Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. We’d not extricate ourselves from that pricey battle for an additional seventeen years. A lot of his speech that night time was an extra try and promote to the nation the justification for his battle. “Had we did not act, the dictator’s weapons of mass destruction packages would proceed to at the present time,” Bush stated. He characterised the Patriot Act, which had unleashed a brand new magnitude of spying on Americans, as “a type of important instruments” within the battle on terror.
“Younger Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery” by Gavin Newsom
(Penguin Press)
On the Shelf
Younger Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery
By Gavin Newsom Penguin Press: 304 pages, $30
In case you purchase books linked on our web site, The Instances might earn a fee from Bookshop.org, whose charges assist unbiased bookstores.
The remainder of his speech was customary fare, ho-hum actually, till he reached a piece close to the top about American values and the necessity for us to “work collectively to counter the unfavourable influences of the tradition and to ship the appropriate messages to our youngsters.” He stated he was troubled by activist judges in activist states who had been threatening to undo the Protection of Marriage Act signed into legislation by his predecessor, President Invoice Clinton. We needed to “defend the sanctity of marriage” because the union of 1 man and one lady, he stated. If want be, he would search a constitutional modification to ban same-sex marriage.
As I used to be leaving the chamber, a middle-aged couple subsequent to me was speaking about how happy they had been that their president was lastly confronting the “gay agenda.” The phrase gay got here out of their mouths bent by contempt. I used to be supposed to move downstairs for a reception with Congresswoman Pelosi and a delegation of California Democrats, however I wanted a breath of contemporary air. Outdoors the Capitol, I stored strolling and muttering to myself. “These are my individuals Bush is attacking. My constituents. My employees. My closest advisers.” Within the chilly and darkish of Washington, I known as considered one of my aides again in San Francisco and pledged that I used to be “going to do one thing about it” as quickly as I returned residence.
The legislation in our state was no completely different from the legislation in each different state. Identical-sex unions couldn’t be acknowledged by the native assessor-recorder’s workplace. They had been unlawful. As I defined to aides my willingness to now defy that legislation, I held up a replica of the California Structure. In Article I, the primary part guarantees that “all individuals are by nature free and unbiased and have inalienable rights.” Amongst these rights are pursuing and acquiring “security, happiness and privateness.” It was not till Part 7.5 that these rights had been then abridged: “Solely a wedding between a person and a lady is legitimate or acknowledged in California.” This not solely contradicted the primary part however was discriminatory on its face.
My prime employees didn’t disagree with my studying, however virtually to an individual they had been against my taking over the problem. Steve Kawa, my chief of employees, a homosexual Bostonian whose accent reduce by all nonsense, pulled me apart and spoke from his coronary heart. His father had renounced him for being homosexual, and he wished nothing greater than to stay in an America the place homophobia was now not the norm. However swinging open the doorways to the town clerk’s workplace and welcoming homosexual males and lesbian ladies to the wedding altar was political suicide, he argued. We had been new to workplace, for one factor. And polls confirmed that lower than one third of Californians supported homosexual marriage.
The “go it gradual” admonition was the mom’s milk of Democratic politics. Within the limitless battle for the hearts and minds of moderates, it appeared the one possible manner for a Democrat to get elected and govern. However this was San Francisco, and we had been speaking about equal safety beneath the legislation for a category of individuals whose ostracism by household, mates, and group had introduced them to San Francisco within the first place. If not right here, the place? Eric Jaye, considered one of my marketing campaign consultants, may see my quandary. I used to be caught between my conscience and the sound political recommendation of the individuals closest to me. We had a number of late-night conversations on the cellphone. “What the f— are you doing right here? Why did we work so exhausting to win when you can’t do one thing daring?” he requested. “This can be a brief life, Gavin. Your time as a politician to get issues executed is only a blip.”
I believed again to my mannequin for the wine retailer. Your entire objective was to show the staid on its head and create a brand new actuality. I known as Joyce Newstat, my coverage director, who was additionally homosexual. “We have to do that,” I advised her. She may hear in my voice that I had made up my thoughts. “OK, however we are able to’t afford to take a incorrect step,” she stated. “Gays and lesbians have a historical past of being blindsided, and also you don’t need to change into a part of that narrative. Give me per week or two to achieve out to the group.” Joyce sat down with Kate Kendell, the sensible government director of the Nationwide Middle for Lesbian Rights, primarily based in San Francisco. “Who is that this man?” Kendell questioned. “He can’t simply come waltzing in right here and upset the fragile stability we’ve taken years to realize.” Joyce advised her I couldn’t be talked out of it, that it had change into internalized after I had gone to Washington and heard the phrases of bigotry ring out within the Capitol. “Nicely, OK. But when he’s going to do it, he has to do it proper,” Kendell stated. She directed her attorneys on the middle to work with our group on fashioning a plan.
I then went to Mabel Teng, my former colleague on the board of supervisors who was now the assessor-recorder of San Francisco. I requested her what issues can be offered to her official duties if we allowed same-sex marriages at metropolis corridor. Mabel, who started her profession in politics as an activist with Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition, didn’t shock me together with her reply. “It might be no downside in any respect, Mayor.” The wedding of a person and a person, or a lady and a lady, would require hardly any change to the paperwork. Slightly than “man and spouse,” they’d present up in her pc as “Applicant One” and “Applicant Two.”
Alarmed by my plans, my father and Uncle Brennan and their shut pal Joe Cotchett — every one steeped in legislation and politics however solely Joe standing six foot 4 and a former Particular Forces paratrooper —tried a last-minute intervention. They lured me to the Balboa Cafe for dinner and wine. They weren’t the sort to beat across the bush. Did I notice that I used to be about to torpedo my political profession?
Joe acquired proper in my face. “Why are you doing this, Gavin?”
“I’ll let you know why I’m doing this,” I stated defiantly. “As a result of it’s the appropriate factor to do.”
I couldn’t have given him a extra easy and true reply, and it appeared to hit Joe, who had constructed his profession out of representing the underdog, proper within the intestine.
“OK,” he stated in a distinct voice. “Then let’s do it.”
With that, my father and uncle went quiet. Not one other phrase was stated about it. I left there that night time considering that even my Newsom kin, those who had my greatest pursuits at coronary heart, may get it incorrect now and again. Whereas I used to be open to skepticism and second-guessing, certainly I welcomed such a course of, ultimately I needed to belief my very own intestine. On the matter of civil rights for all Californians, there was no turning again. As for large Joe Cotchett, he ended up becoming a member of the ranks of attorneys preventing for the authorized proper to same-sex marriage.
From “Younger Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery” by Gavin Newsom, revealed by Penguin Press, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random Home LLC. Copyright © 2026 by Gavin Newsom.
