This week LGBT activists will mark the one-year anniversary of the passage of Proposition 8, the same-sex marriage ban California voters adopted on Election Night in 2008, and are fighting to see that Maine voters do not follow suit tomorrow (Tuesday, November 3) by rejecting their state's pro-same-sex marriage law.

In San Francisco, Election Night will also mark the 20th anniversary of another political setback at the polls for the city's LGBT community. Back in 1989 voters rejected what was known as Proposition S, an initiative that would have preserved the city's domestic partnership policy.

The Board of Supervisors had enacted the law in May of that year. It allowed same-sex couples to become domestic partners and be granted limited rights, such as hospital visitation. In a city wracked by AIDS, the law had become a key political priority for the LGBT community.

But opponents of the law, particularly the Catholic Church, placed Prop S on the ballot in hopes of having the city's residents reject it.

Two decades later the parallels between the Yes on S campaign and the No on 8 effort are striking. Not only did divisions within the LGBT community hamper both electoral fights, each campaign faced vocal opposition from leaders within communities of color.

And complacency within the LGBT community hampered both campaigns' ability to attract volunteers or the attention of LGBT voters. Back in 1989 the city's gay community was more focused – and divided – on a bond measure that would help pay for the construction of a new baseball stadium for the San Francisco Giants.

Last year, the election of Barack Obama as not only the country's first African American president but also the first Democrat to serve in the White House in eight years had galvanized many LGBT people, who were less focused on the same-sex marriage fight.

California's reputation as an anything goes state also lulled the LGBT community into complacency during both political fights. In liberal San Francisco, many LGBT people back in 1989 were convinced that Prop S would pass.

A similar confidence overshadowed last year's No on 8 debate. With polls last summer showing Prop 8 losing, the No on 8 campaign found itself hampered in raising funds. A sense that Golden State voters could not possibly deny same-sex couples the right to marry permeated the state's gay urban centers.

While the passage of Prop 8 hit not only the state's but also the nation's LGBT community like an earthquake last November, with aftershocks still to this day, back in 1989 the Yes on S campaign never fully recovered from the aftermath of the Loma Prieta earthquake on October 17 of that year.

The Yes on S campaign suspended its operation for two weeks and donated nearly $30,000 – crucial funds for advertising and get-out-the-vote efforts – toward earthquake relief efforts. With reconstruction a major concern, the bond measure for the baseball stadium became the key issue in that year's election. [The stadium measure also lost at the polls that year.]

Even a last minute effort by then-Mayor Art Agnos, who urged voters to back Prop S in a letter mailed to households and walked through the Castro the Friday night prior to the election to drum up support for the measure – failed to elicit enough support to preserve the city's domestic partnership law. Prop S lost by less than 1 percent or 1,700 votes.

[A year later the LGBT community would regroup and help pass Proposition K, restoring the city's domestic partnership law. It would help launch the fight to gain full marriage equality for same-sex couples.]

"This city was not yet ready for another year to definitively adopt it and begin the trek toward today's marriage efforts. That 1989 electoral loss too may well have been an aftershock of the earthquake. People become conservative and negative after great shocks. But they also can recover," wrote blogger janinsanfran, who was volunteering at the Yes on S campaign's Castro office when the quake struck, on her blog at www.happening-here.blogspot.com.

Joyce Newstat, who had taken a leave of absence as a supervisor's aide in City Hall to work on the Yes on S campaign, said she never bought in to the analysis that if it were not for the earthquake Prop S would have passed. Instead, she believes LGBT people back then failed to realize the importance of having domestic partnership rights.

"Domestic partners, those kind of rights was so kind of far out there. I don't think people took it for granted it was going to pass. It was just such a really, really big picture thing in some ways that people didn't get as involved in it," she said.

And she said that the city's two LGBT Democratic clubs – the Alice B. Toklas and Harvey Milk – were so fixated and at loggerheads on the ballpark measure that they were unable to unite around Prop S.

"Milk and Alice were mortal enemies. There was no coming together or bringing together of the community," said Newstat. "It was a terrible loss that Prop S didn't pass."

Whether California's LGBT community can reverse the Prop 8 loss remains to be seen. It is unclear if a ballot measure aimed at repealing the anti-same-sex marriage measure will make it onto the 2010 ballot or in 2012. And even then there is no guarantee that the anti-gay forces will not succeed for a second time.

Many will be looking to find hope in Tuesday's Maine election, where the Prop 8 proponents have launched a nearly identical campaign as the one they led in California last year, to see if the tide may be turning toward full marriage equality at the ballot box.

To watch election results Tuesday night, join with other LGBT politicos at the re-election party of out city Treasurer Jose Cisneros, who is running unopposed for a second full-term. The party runs from 6 to 9 p.m. at Lime Restaurant, 2247 Market Street in the Castro.

Kehoe campaign aide charged with embezzlement

Out lesbian state Senator Christine Kehoe (D-San Diego) has fired her longtime campaign treasurer amid revelations that more than $57,000 has been embezzled from her campaign accounts.

According to a report last week in the San Diego Union Tribune, Kehoe dismissed Kinde Durkee, owner of Kinde Durkee & Associates, for allegedly failing to report 29 suspected check forgeries by one of the company's employees. She has asked the Los Angeles County district attorney and a state political watchdog to investigate the financial irregularities, according to the paper.

Kehoe, the sole out lesbian serving in the state Legislature, told the paper that, "We don't know the whole story."

Among the problems discovered, according to the article, include undisclosed reimbursement checks that Durkee wrote to the senator's campaign committee; a problem with a $14,000 transaction involving the California Latino Alliance; and an unexplained series of expenditures amounting to roughly $100,000.

A random audit of Kehoe's campaign accounts conducted by the state's Franchise Tax Board on behalf of the Fair Political Practices Commission brought the problems to light. Kehoe learned about the allegations three weeks ago.

She then hired attorney Lance Olson to conduct his own review, and following that, she fired Durkee, according to the paper.

Durkee has yet to comment on the allegations.

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Got a tip on LGBT politics? Call Matthew S. Bajko at (415) 861-5019 or e-mail m.bajko@ebar.com.