SF mayor speech sparks debate
In a letter to Archbishop George Niederauer, the chair and executive vice chair of the San Francisco Interfaith Council’s board of directors expressed disappointment with San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom’s address at the 11th Annual Mayor’s Interfaith Prayer Breakfast held Nov. 25 at the Cathedral Hill Hotel in San Francisco. The mayor’s address focused largely on the passage of Proposition 8, an initiative on the November ballot defining marriage as between a man and a woman.
The Rev. James DeLange, council chair and former pastor at St. Francis Lutheran Church in San Francisco, told Catholic San Francisco the breakfast was not an appropriate forum to discuss the marriage amendment. “We regret that Mayor Newsom chose this occasion to express his anger at the Catholic Church and other religious people whom he perceives as instrumental in the passage of Proposition 8 in the Nov. 4 election,” wrote Delange and executive vice chair Rita Semel in a Nov. 30 letter to Archbishop Niederauer.
DeLange said the council is drafting a public statement addressing the mayor’s speech. He said he expected the statement to be similar to his and Semel’s letter to Archbishop Niederauer, but that the final language would have to be approved by the full board of directors.
The letter also praised “the impact that Catholic Charities and other religiously based social service organizations have in alleviating hunger in our city.”
The mayor’s speech criticized Proposition 8 supporters, singling out the Catholic Church in particular. Newsom, a Catholic, said he took exception to the Church’s position and did not feel it reflected the faith tradition in which he was raised.
The mayor also acknowledged that opponents of Proposition 8 had not done enough to express their opposition in ways that were acceptable to religious communities.
“We’ll continue the fight for full equality,” Newsom said. “But I am encouraged that as we reflect upon the last few months, that some of us have been humbled, and as a consequence, we’ll do it in a more reflective and thoughtful way.”
The mayor briefly acknowledged the religious organizations honored at the breakfast for their work on hunger. For some the mention was overshadowed by the focus on Proposition 8.
Semel told Catholic San Francisco the mayor’s speech missed the point of the prayer breakfast. “What we tried to do with the people we were paying tribute to was to show that faith-based organizations in our city do more than our share to feed the poor,” said Semel. “I felt that it was too bad that the mayor missed the opportunity to pay tribute to all of the agencies we were honoring.”
Maurice Healy, communications director for the Archdiocese of San Francisco and an attendee of the breakfast, said the mayor’s speech was a continuation of disrespect toward religious proponents of Proposition 8. “Mayor Newsom launched into an intemperate attack on those religions and people of faith who supported Proposition 8,” Healy said. “The mayor said those who supported the initiative sought to deny rights to others. He did not give any respect for people holding religious beliefs about the nature of marriage.”
In his speech, the mayor said that while he respects the separation of church and state, he felt his role as a government leader put him in conflict with religious leaders who favor the marriage amendment. “My job is to represent the state, and in representing it, to represent people equally and fairly regardless of gender, regardless of race, and regardless of sexual orientation,” Newsom said.
This statement drew a standing ovation from much of the crowd, with the notable exception of, among others, Catholic representatives at the head tables including Archbishop Niederauer and auxiliary bishops Ignatius Wang and William Justice.
Iftekhar Hai said he supported the mayor’s talk. A member of the Interfaith Council Board of Directors and the director of interfaith relations for the United Muslims of America, Hai told Catholic San Francisco Dec. 9 that “this is what democracy is about” and that he did not come away with the impression the mayor had categorized all Prop 8 advocates as bigoted.
Hai also lauded Archbishop Niederauer’s comments at the breakfast as “eloquent.” He said he has been out of the area and was not aware of a statement being drafted by the Interfaith Council directors.
On Dec. 1, Archbishop Niederauer released an “open letter” in which he exhorted a more civil discourse in the wake of the often rancorous Proposition 8 campaigns. He also defended faith communities’ role in advocating its passage.
“Some voices in the wider community declare that there could only be one motive: hatred, prejudice and bigotry against gays, along with a determination to discriminate against them and deny them their civil rights. That is not so.”
A member of the Interfaith Council Board of Directors and director emeritus of the Archdiocese’s Office of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, Father Gerard O’Rourke said, “I think the Archbishop’s plea was right on. It creates a space for healing and peace in our hearts. And for whatever time that takes, we have to be willing to give it. It will take a lot of good will.”
“This is not a sound-bite kind of thing,” Father O’Rourke said, adding, “We need some coming together on all kinds of fronts right now.”
For some, the mayor’s breakfast address damaged interfaith dialogue. George Wesolek, director of the Archdiocese of San Francisco’s Office of Public Policy and Social Concerns, said he was taken aback by the speech.
“The main impression I had was shock,” Wesolek said. “I have worked more than 12 years in the interfaith movement in San Francisco, and one of the unwritten rules is that we work from a point of our common ground on issues. I was shocked to find at a forum bringing us together on food issues, that the mayor broke that bond.” “He used (the breakfast) to talk about a highly divisive issue, and also to cast blame while he was doing it,” Wesolek said. “He really did change interfaith relations tremendously with that one talk. Now we have to repair it, and I think we’re on the road to doing that.”
Jesuit Father Donal Godfrey, executive director of University Ministry at the University of San Francisco, said that while he “personally opposed Prop 8 which is a matter of conscience,” he “did not feel that this was the right occasion for a speech such as this.”
“The topic the mayor had been invited to address was world hunger, so to then come and speak on this issue in such a way seemed odd, whatever one’s position on the issue. It took away from the issue the inter-faith group had decided to highlight.”
Newsom, whose speech was self-described as extemporaneous, played a high-profile role in the Proposition 8 campaign. In 2004, fewer than three weeks into his first term, the mayor began issuing marriage certificates for same-sex couples. The move ignited a firestorm of controversy nationwide, and was later declared illegal and halted by a court injunction.
The issue again came to the fore in May, when the California Supreme Court ruled same-sex marriage was constitutional. The court decision set the stage for the Proposition 8 initiative, which passed with roughly 52 percent of the vote. In the interim, some 18,000 same-sex couples wed statewide, with more than a quarter of that number coming from San Francisco, according to estimates from UCLA’s School of Law.
Calls to the mayor’s office for comment on Monday and Tuesday had not been returned by press deadline.
By Michael Vick
Dan Morris-Young contributed to this story.
