Burnt Orange Report

Knight's Gay Son Among those Married in SF

By Byron LaMasters

Mary Cheney may not have the courage to speak out against her father's hate campaign for the Federal Marriage Amendment, but David Knight sure does:

When David Knight married his boyfriend of 10 years, his parents were not among the mothers and fathers proudly snapping photos and sipping champagne at San Francisco's City Hall.

His mother is long gone, dead of cancer when he was 17. And his father, well ...

These are precarious times for the gay son of state Sen. William J. "Pete" Knight, the arch-conservative architect of California's Defense of Marriage Act.

[...]

The elder Knight, 75, a Republican being termed out of office this year, is California's most outspoken opponent of marriage for gay couples. Since spearheading the 2000 ballot initiative that reinforced California's "one man, one woman" marriage laws, he has used the courts to keep state agencies from granting spousal rights to same-sex couples. His nonprofit group is at the center of the legal challenges to San Francisco's same-sex wedding spree.

The younger, a 42-year-old custom furniture maker in Baltimore, flew to the city with his longtime partner and got married just two days before the California Supreme Court shut down the weddings. The court is considering whether city officials had the authority to contravene state law by sanctioning almost 4,000 gay and lesbian marriages.

Good for David Knight. If only more gays and lesbians from conservative / Republican backgrounds would speak out...