Does it all boil down to Gavin Newsom, the mayor of San Francisco?

Could this man really have been the first domino in a string of dominos that will strongly influence the course of this country and the world? (Admittedly, a tenous and convoluted string of dominos.)

The argument goes as follows.

Gavin Newsom allowed and encouraged gay marriages in San Francisco to much fanfare and press coverage, despite warnings from Sacramento.

These images incensed a large group of people in the Midwest and South who then put anti-gay-marriage amendments on the ballot in multiple states (eleven?), and then strongly motivated the church-based fundamentalist vote.

These people came out in force to vote against gay marriage, and while they were at the polls anyway, decided they might as well vote in Bush, a Republican House, and a Republican Senate.

This will ensure a high likelihood of the appointment of four or so rather conservative Supreme Court Justices in the next few years, thus altering the judicial landscape of the US for the next 30 years, and ironically, probably stalling the gay marriage movement for 20-30 years.

Apparently, a number of Democrats think so, and won't have their picture taken with him or be seen with him.

Personally, I think they could have gone for "civil unions" now, and then pushed for "marriage" within a decade or two. Now it seems likely that it will take another generation for them even to get much traction on the "civil union" front due to the large backlash.

Of course, the ramifications go far beyond this one small (though quite heated) domestic issue. It has created a shift of the US to the right on a broad spectrum of issues.

Could the political naivete of one man really have made such a significant impact on the world?

And if you do buy this argument, then how often does it happen that one person, taking incautious action on a local issue, involuntarily swings the course of the world?

And, of course, if you don't buy this argument, there's not much more to discuss other than saying you don't buy it.

Discuss amongst yourselves....

(I'd like to request that you keep the pro/con gay marriage discussions on the other two threads currently hosting them; I am really interested here only in the (potential) impact of one man shifting a large mass of people (the world) by behaving in a politically naive manner in order to make a statement at a local level.)

Chaos theory, it happens every day.

I think it's highly likely that Gavin had such a broad effect on the election and even helped shift the country to the right. Sometimes standing up for principles you believe in can have that effect, though the Democrats shouldn't blame the guy (unless they thought his actions were wrong to being with). If everything was on such a razor edge that simply causing a rally to arms around a single issue can cause such a shift, then it was bound to happen and some other minor effect could have caused the same result. His actions could have just as easily gone the other direction.

And really, this guy didn't necessarily change what the people of the US believed, he only caused them to reveal it a bit more than perhaps they would have.

Finally, who knows what the long-term effect will be. Maybe Bush will decide to invade France and then we'll get an even bigger shift to the left in retaliation. . .

I just thought I'd add a relevant salon article which talks to Gavin Newsom about the issue.

The most interesting bit is the part about how San Francisco's actions took all the heat off of Massachusets, thus saving Kerry from having the two-guys-in-wedding-dresses-kissing pictures coming from his Liberal Home State.

Matthew

I was just going to say. Didn't the Massachusetts thing happen before SF? And Vermont before them?