LONG BEACH, Calif. (AP) – A California man has been sentenced to 50 years to life in prison for shooting to death his Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor at a meeting.

Jurors in Long Beach convicted Scott Gordon Reynolds of first-degree murder in the slaying of 33-year-old Uriel Noriega.

The 29-year-old Reynolds was sentenced Monday. He testified he snapped after Noriega told other members at an AA meeting two years ago that Reynolds is gay. It’s a secret confided by Reynolds to only his mother and AA sponsor.

Reynolds claimed he brought the weapon to the meeting at a church because he planned to commit suicide in front of fellow AA members. But prosecutor Patrick O’Crowley says that motive was never substantiated during the trial for Reynolds.

LOS ANGELES (AP) – A Los Angeles bar that was the site of watershed gay rights protests in the 1960s has been designated a city landmark.

The City Council voted to name the bar once called the Black Cat a cultural-historic monument Friday, the same day thousands of gay rights advocates protested the Proposition 8 ballot measure defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

Police raided the Silver Lake neighborhood bar that served a largely gay clientele at a celebration early on New Year’s Day of 1967 and arrested 14 patrons and bartenders. In months after the raid, hundreds protested for gay rights in front of the bar, now called Le Barcito.

Landmarking proponent Wes Joe says recognizing the bar reminds people how far gay rights have advanced, despite Proposition 8’s passage.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom says he’s frustrated that voters approved a measure banning same-sex marriage in California, but says he’s hopeful the ban won’t endure.

Newsom says he’s optimistic because only 52 percent of voters favored Proposition 8, compared with 62 percent of voters who favored a ban on same-sex marriage in 2000.

Speaking to reporters in his office, the mayor says he sees hope in “the millions and millions of Californians who said it’s wrong to take rights away from people.”

The loss was a political defeat for Newsom, who’s been one of the most prominent advocates of same-sex marriage. He says the effect on his gubernatorial aspirations is “trivial” and “irrelevant.”

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) – While voters in California were banning same-sex marriage, activists in Maine were at the polls looking for supporters of the idea.

On Election Day, volunteers from the group EqualityMaine were posted at petition tables in nearly 100 polling places in 12 of 16 Maine counties. They say they spoke with thousands of voters about marriage for same-sex couples.

EqualityMaine’s Betsy Smith says by the end of the day, volunteers had identified and collected contact information from more than 33,000 voters.

There is no active initiative to get a same-sex marriage question on the Maine ballot.

In California, voters on Nov. 4 amended the state constitution to define marriage as a heterosexual act. It overrides a state Supreme Court ruling that briefly gave same-sex couples the right to wed. Same-sex-marriage bans also passed on Nov. 4 in Arizona and Florida.

PORTLAND – Jeff Merkley, a little-known policy wonk who likes to regale voters with his legislative accomplishments, was far from the first choice of national Democrats looking for a challenger to Oregon’s Sen. Gordon Smith.

But Merkley, with lots of pounding the pavement and a ton of financial help from the national party, surprised everyone by unseating his better-known opponent in the Nov. 4 election, becoming the first candidate to knock off an incumbent senator from Oregon in 40 years.

It was one of the last Senate races to be decided. A flood of votes Oregonians delivered on election day kept election workers tallying ballots for two days.

The 52-year-old Portland Democrat began a “100 towns for change” tour in June in Myrtle Creek, the southern Oregon timber town where he was born and where his father earned a living as a mill worker.

Merkley was the first in his family to go to college. He received a master’s degree in public policy from Princeton and a bachelor’s degree in international relations from Stanford. In the mid-1980s, Merkley worked as a national security analyst for the Pentagon and the Congressional Budget Office.

First elected to the Oregon House in 1998, Merkley served as House minority leader from 2003 to 2006, and was credited with leading Democrats into a slim 31-29 majority in 2006.

As his reward he was elected speaker of the House in January 2007. Merkley pushed through an ambitious agenda. The legislature approved domestic partnerships for gay couples, cracked down on predatory payday and car title lenders, and established the state’s first rainy day fund.

Merkley and has wife, Mary Sorteberg, a registered nurse, have two children.

He announced his candidacy for Senate in August 2007 after better-known Democrats declined to run against the well-financed Smith.

In his campaign stops around the state, Merkley tapped into an anti-GOP tide in Oregon, telling crowds that Smith was a Bush Republican who was more interested in bailing out Wall Street than helping folks on Main Street.

SILVERTON, Oregon (AP) – Plenty of politicians reinvent themselves, but few do it quite like Mayor-elect Stu Rasmussen.

Rasmussen has been a fixture in Silverton politics for more than 20 years, and had twice before been mayor of the small city 45 miles (70 kilometers) south of Portland. Those terms, however, were before his breast implants and before the once-discreet crossdresser started wearing dresses and 3-inch (8-centimeter) heels in public.

Silverton has made Rasmussen the country’s first openly transgender mayor, according to the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, a group that works to help openly lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender people win elected office.

Rasmussen, 60, unseated incumbent mayor Ken Hector, with whom he had long clashed, by 1,988 votes to 1,512.

Because Rasmussen’s appearance was no secret, the campaign was dominated by policy issues.

“I’ve blackmail-proofed myself,” Rasmussen said.

The story of Rasmussen’s election was first reported by JustOut, a bimonthly publication for Portland’s gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities.

“Stu never sought this recognition out,” said JustOut reporter Stephen Marc Beaudoin. “He’s interested in doing a great job for the community that he loves. The gender identity thing is just a total backseat thing.”

That comes across when Rasmussen speaks in his decidedly masculine voice.

“I am a dude,” he said. “I am a heterosexual male who appears to be a female.”

His longtime live-in girlfriend, Victoria Sage, told The Oregonian newspaper that she and Rasmussen have been an item for almost 35 years.

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) – The head of Utah’s Catholic parishes expressed solidarity with the Mormon faith’s support for a constitutional amendment that banned same-sex marriage in California.

Rev. John C. Wester, bishop of the Salt Lake Catholic Diocese, said his church took a strong stand in support of Proposition 8.

Wester said the debate invoked strong feelings on both sides – thousands of angry protesters marched around the headquarters of the Mormon church Friday – and called for civility and respect in the same-sex marriage debate.

Wester said the proposition drew the support of many other faiths and ethnic groups and that it shouldn’t be interpreted as an attack on any same-sex person. The bishop made his remarks in a statement circulated Saturday to Utah news outlets.

Wester is leader of 200,000 Catholics who make up less than 10 percent of Utah’s population. The Salt Lake Diocese governs 63 parishes and missions throughout the state.

“Like our friends in the Mormon faith, the Catholic Church has long championed and promoted the sacredness of traditional marriage and the importance of the family in our society,” Wester said.

“While acknowledging that this position is not universally held in our society today, our churches are committed to proclaiming the truth and we cherish our ability to participate in the democratic process,” he said.