The California Democrat — who told the New York Times‘s Maureen Dowd that his political future was so fuzzy he could, in a couple years, end up "as the clerk of a wine store" — called Obama’s slow walking on support for gay marriage "fundamentally inexcusable."
"Oh, I can’t get in trouble here," Newsom said with a playful wince. "I want him to succeed. But I am very upset by what he’s not done in terms of rights of gays and lesbians. I understand it tactically in a campaign, but at this point I don’t know. There is some belief that he actually doesn’t believe in same-sex marriage. But it’s fundamentally inexcusable for a member of the Democratic party to stand on the principle that separate is now equal, but only on the basis of sexual orientation. We’ve always fought for the rights of minorities and against the whims of majorities."