Eclecticism

I am loving, loving, loving one aspect of my newsreading these days.

San Francisco started it.

New Mexico is going to start.

Chicago, Minneapolis, Salt Lake City (!!!) and Plattsburgh, NY are also expressing support and talking about joining in.

Judges keep refusing to grant injunctions stopping the process — in one beautiful instance, the request was refused on the basis of a misused semicolon.

There are two things that really stand out to me about how wonderful this is. The first is that it’s suddenly happening so fast, and gaining so much support across the country. The second is how it all began…

It was only his 12th day as mayor of San Francisco, but Gavin Newsom decided that night — the very night he attended President Bush’s State of the Union address in Washington, D.C. — that he was going to defy California law.

And turn the nation on its ear.

Attending the president’s Jan. 20 speech as a guest of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Newsom listened closely as Bush voiced his strong support for outlawing same-sex marriage — with a constitutional amendment, if necessary.

Not long after the speech, Newsom called his chief of staff, Steve Kawa, a gay man who was at home with his partner and their two children. ”He told me that he wanted to do something,” Kawa said.

Two weeks later, during a staff meeting, Newsom dropped the bombshell on his top aides: He wanted them to explore how the city could start issuing marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples.

Kawa said the mayor asked staff to gather legal briefs, news articles and other background information. Added his communications chief, Peter Ragone, ``He also wanted it done quietly.”

Within 24 hours, Kawa was on the phone with Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, a San Francisco-based public interest organization.

Her reaction: ”Oh, my God, you’re kidding me,” Kendell said in an interview.

It was the first time, Kendell said, that a mayor of an American city wanted to take such an initiative. And Newsom, a straight Irish Catholic man married for two years, was the perfect politician to take on the fight, she said.

Thank God for people like Gavin Newsom — people who decide that it’s time to do the right thing, and do it.

And congratulations to every single one of the more than 3,000 brand-new married, loving couples.

It’s been a long time coming.

iTunes: “Bacchanalian Feast” by Original Love Tribe, The from the album Twisted Secrets Vol. 2 (1993, 5:46).

Feel safe yet?

Imagine if the world’s most notorious fugitive, Osama bin Laden, attempted to board an airliner in the United States. Suppose he were clean-shaven, sporting short hair, wearing a pinstriped business suit and looked like so many other travelers that no suspicions were raised. How far might he get? If he used aliases such as names of family members, he would be nabbed instantly and whisked away for questioning. That’s because many of his relatives are on the FBI’s secret “no-fly list,” according to intelligence sources.

But suppose he boldly decided to use his own name. Would he be cleared to fly? Insight recently learned that scenario was tested at a U.S. airport in the South during January. The result was troubling: America’s most-wanted fugitive is cleared to fly. According to airline-security documents obtained by this magazine, the name Osama bin Laden was punched into the computer by an airline official and, remarkably, that name was cleared at the security checkpoint all passengers must pass through before being issued a boarding pass.

Y’know, I knew the guy sitting behind me on the Memphis to Cincinnati leg of my trip home looked a little too clean cut to be believed.

More seriously, there’s some very interesting information in the article about how the current CAPS (and proposed CAPS II) system works, and how effective it really is (answer: not very).

iTunes: “Renaissance Affair” by Hooverphonic from the album Magnificent Tree, The (2000, 3:25).