World Beats a Path to S.F. Mayor Newsom's Door

If it weren't for a "60 Minutes" TV segment featuring Newsom -- he was too busy to watch it -- and a private meeting with a Democratic Party kingmaker from Washington, it would have been difficult to tell that the neophyte mayor had planted himself at the center of an international news story.

But laud him or loathe him, most observers agree that Newsom's decision to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples will secure his place in political history.

He was featured on the front page of France's Le Monde as a civil rights hero. The conservative British press has lambasted him. In this country, his name and earnest Irish-Catholic face are household fare, beamed into living rooms on "Larry King Live" and "Nightline."

By the time the California Supreme Court on Thursday ordered a halt to the gay marriages -- at least for now -- Newsom's move had reverberated through the country like a political stadium wave. Officials in Oregon, New Mexico and New York followed his lead, while conservatives in a growing number of states and the nation's capital stepped up plans for constitutional amendments that would ban the same-sex unions.

Against this backdrop, one would expect the mayor to be just a bit distracted. He's not.

The action by the state high court triggered meetings with legal advisors and landed Newsom before news cameras to deliver a message of defiance. He vowed to press forward with the city's legal challenge to state marriage law as unconstitutional. The frenzy continued into Friday, when Newsom rose before 3:30 a.m. for an appearance on a national TV news show.

But for the most part, the 36-year-old mayor has stubbornly refused to be overtaken by the events he set in motion.

In the four weeks since Newsom ordered his county clerk to make marriage licenses gender-neutral, more than 4,100 couples became "spouses for life" on the rotunda stairs below his City Hall office. But behind the imposing wooden doors of Room 200, it is mostly mundane city business that occupies Newsom. But he is determined that it not be business as usual.