Gavin Newsom: The anti-bohemian, establishment man who has defied the White House on gay rights

Gavin Newsom doesn't look like someone at the eye of the fiercest political storm to hit the United States in years. On the contrary, he looks on top of the world. Loving every minute. Regretting absolutely nothing.

And who can blame him? Eight weeks ago, Newsom was literally nobody, a slick, well-spoken, youthful incoming mayor of San Francisco with a reputation among his peers and Democratic Party minders for playing it safe. Outside the San Francisco Bay area, he had no profile at all. Then came February 12 – one of those dates that already seems destined to go down in history – and his extraordinary decision to defy state law by authorising his city clerk to issue marriage licences to same-sex couples.

In less than three weeks, City Hall in San Francisco has displaced Iraq, the economy and even the Democratic presidential primaries as the most volatile faultline in American politics. Same-sex couples have been queuing around the block, recorded every step of the way by national and international television news crews. To date, more than 3,400 have tied the knot, flying in from around the country to seize the historical moment while it lasts. Conservative "family values" advocates have been spitting indignation, lawsuits have flown in every direction and politicians have been forced to stand up and be counted on an issue most of them regard as a minefield to be avoided at all costs.

President Bush has thrown his support behind a constitutional amendment to stop gay marriage in its tracks. And California's Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, almost as new to his job as Newsom, has decried what he calls "an imminent risk to civil order" and warned – a touch luridly – of riots in the streets.

"It's been a busy few days," Newsom admits with a certain relish. He knew perfectly well that he would upset a lot of people when he made his fateful decision – starting with the Democratic Party leadership, worried that his actions might scupper their chances of retaking the White House in November – but he also takes great satisfaction in sticking it to critics on his left who, during San Francisco's spirited city election three months ago, saw him as a hack and a corporate apologist who would take the multicultural city by the bay further down the road towards urban blandness.

No danger of that now. He likens his actions to the great acts of civil disobedience that marked the Civil Rights era. After the Summer of Love of 1967 – incidentally, the year of Newsom's birth – San Francisco is now experiencing its equally counter-cultural Winter of Love.

When people point out that an overwhelming majority of Americans opposes gay marriage, he reminds them that public opinion was equally vehement in condemning interracial marriage before it was upheld as a basic constitutional right by the Supreme Court , also in 1967.

This is, he says, about "doing what is right regardless of political consequences", about upholding the values of non-discrimination and equal rights enshrined in the constitution, about insisting – as another landmark Supreme Court decision, Brown vs Board of Education, did 50 years ago this year – that there is no such status as "separate, but equal" under the law. A married man himself, he says he wants to offer gay people no more and no less than the rights he and his glamorous society wife Kimberly enjoyed when they tied the knot 26 months ago.

It is also, as he frankly admits, a deliberate strike against President Bush and what he sees as a dangerous streak of bigotry in the White House's rhetoric. Newsom's moment of truth came during the State of the Union speech in January, when the president – responding to the Massachussetts high court's endorsement of gay marriage -- denounced "activist judges" seeking to redefine marriage by court order and thereby trample on "one of the most fundamental, enduring institutions of our civilisation".

Newsom was in the audience in the Capitol that night, and reacted viscerally to what he was hearing. The fact that, in the row directly in front of him, people were applauding the president and sneeringly referring to gays as "those people", only made his gut instinct all the stronger. "I sat there in disbelief. I really felt I was living in another world," Newsom recounted. "So I got straight on the phone with my staff here in San Francisco and asked them – was it just me? We gotta do something." When various advisers fretted that the middle of a presidential election campaign might not be the right time to promote gay marriage, Newsom told them he was not prepared to wait. "There's never going to be a right time," he said. "Besides, it's not an issue I created. The President of the United States created this issue."

These are a fighting words for a man everyone in San Francisco had pegged as an inveterate establishment figure, a Democratic Party machine politician whose ambition would never allow him to throw caution to the wind in this way. Before entering politics, Newsom was a successful restaurant owner and wine entrepreneur – hardly the training ground of a radical. When he ran for mayor, he clung close to the coat-tails of his predecessor, the consummately political but ultimately unadventurous Willie Brown. His opponents assailed him as a pro-business, anti-bohemian, slick but ultimately empty man in a suit.

Those close to him knew better, admiring his intellect and his sharp instincts as well as a certain baseline integrity. Even they, however, could not have foreseen the way Newsom has stepped out from under the timid shadow of his party and gone for broke. As such, he is part of a new movement in the Democratic Party – symbolised also by Howard Dean's insurgent campaign for the presidency – that has decided right-wing Republicans can no longer be allowed to win every argument in America and that some rules of etiquette have to be broken, and broken decisively.

Newsom's criticisms of the White House have grown only more vehement as the gay marriage controversy has deepened. He described last week's constitutional amendment proposal as "shameful", an expression of "pure politics" by a president unafraid to mess with the founding document of American democracy as a way of pleasing his supporters and furthering his bid for re-election. "If he wants to land on an aircraft carrier to send political messages, that's okay by me," he said. "But stay away from the constitution of the United States – that's sacrosanct."

The legal arguments are, naturally, complicated on both sides. California is one of 38 states whose laws explicitly define marriage as being between a man and a woman, something California voters endorsed in a popular ballot initiative in 2000. On the face of it, then, what San Francisco is doing is illegal, pure and simple. But Newsom's gamble is that he can prove in court that the state law violates the constitution's equal protection provision. And, so far, he is winning his bet.

Four different court hearings, including one last Friday in the California Supreme Court, have refused to buy the argument that the weddings need to be stopped immediately on the grounds that they are doing "irreparable harm". No US court, in fact, has ever contradicted the argument that gay marriage should be regarded as an expression of equal rights under the law. And those riots feared by Governor Schwarzenegger haven't shown any signs of materialising.

"The system is working beautifully," Newsom said. "The governor had a right to object to this, and he did. We wanted to go to the Supreme Court. We want to get to the constitutionality of this issue. I'm proud of the civility we've seen in the past two weeks. I'm glad to see lives being changed, glad we're validating human beings. It's a very exhilarating time."

For his first couple to marry, Newsom picked a pair of veteran campaigners for gay rights in San Francisco, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon. They have been together for 51 years, making them, in Newsom's view, as good an advertisement for marriage as anyone. Far better their 51-year example, he argued, than Britney Spears' "51-hour marriage" that arose from an incautious night on the town in Las Vegas. "I don't want to pick a fight with Britney Spears," he said, "but I don't think getting hitched after a night of drinking does a whole lot for the defence of marriage."

From that first gay wedding has come a succession of indelible moments – from the proud 80-year-old mother who thanked Newsom for making her son so happy, to the six-year-old girl, crying with joy in her mothers' arms and thanking him for allowing her to go back to her school and tell everyone her parents were married like almost everyone else's.

Last week saw the first celebrity marriage, that of Rosie O'Donnell, the television talk-show host, who was as incensed by President Bush's constitutional amendment proposal as Newsom was. Newsom is not the sort of politician, however, to get comfortable inside his own bubble and disregard the consequences of his actions. On the contrary, he realises exactly how much is at stake. "My political life may end," he acknowledges. But then he adds: "So what? Politicians too often forget why they go into politics in the first place. Guys like me come and go. I'm hardly relevant. But certain things transcend politics and politicians. They are called values."

Whatever else one might make of such sentiments, they are certainly unusual in today's minutely parsed, focus-group driven political lexicon. It is perhaps Newsom's bad luck that, behind the idealistic veneer, he is bound to be scrutinised for ulterior motives and fine political calculations. It is certainly true that, contrary to what he says, gay marriage is a winner all the way within his own constituency. It puts him on the map nationally and internationally, and guarantees him unswerving support in liberal San Francisco. But he also seems entirely sincere in his belief that he is changing the world for the better, in his determination to prove that the Bay Area's allure and prosperity are down to the fact that "in many respects, we represent the future".

"I'm not naïve. This is not just hubris," he said. "This is about core convictions. I think politicians should do exactly what they think is right. They should say things exactly the way they do over dinner with their families. It's kind of old-fashioned, right?" Old-fashioned, but also, in its way, revolutionary. There are signs that gay marriage may begin to sprout in other parts of the country too – Massachussetts, New Mexico, Chicago, New York – at which point the movement may just become too big to stop. As Newsom walked out of our conference room and returned to his office, a male couple dressed in matching black outfits was being married on City Hall's grand staircase. They held a two-year-old child between them as they said their vows, ecstatically, and embraced several times. A friend captured the whole thing on digital video – not just images for the family album but also, one sensed, a document of history in the making.