Play for Gay Weddings or Lose Your Funding

Try to imagine any other scenario where actions like this by a big city mayor wouldn't result in condemnation and/or lawsuits:

Mayor Gavin Newsom has written to instrumental and vocal ensembles that are supported by Grants for the Arts, asking small groups - from one to six performers - to play two-hour sets of "music appropriate for the occasion" at City Hall during peak wedding times next week.

This sounds like a lovely concept, but perhaps the wording of the call for volunteers is a bit heavy-handed: "With City funding comes civic responsibility. ... We expect that Grants for the Arts organizations will make every effort to cooperate with these requests."

Some grumblers are complaining that the mix of politics and art is unseemly, and a curmudgeonly e-mail making the rounds claims that the mayor is doing this only to encourage news ops and get national publicity for himself. "Since when did private weddings become civic events?" asks the letter. "... Why aren't the biggest performing arts organizations, SF Symphony, Opera, Ballet, etc., requested to perform? Because Gavin doesn't want to inconvenience/aggravate his biggest donors? ... Isn't this blackmail?"

What if it was Christmastime and the mayor mandated that city-funded organizations show up at local events and play Christmas music? How long until the ACLU would jump all over that?