CHRISTINE KEHOE The style she prefers is a far cry from in-your-face. Congenial, sleeves rolled up, her approach is a nod to both her small town, Catholic upbringing and her later baptism as a San Diego AIDS activist. Guided by Conscience It’s not always easy separating Irish Catholic family. Confronting people. It changed me.” politicians from the cities they serve. a failed marriage and a secret at her Christine Kehoe has hardly Destinies have a way of twining core, she hopped into a car in the discarded the lessons that framed her together. Think Chicago and Daley, summer of 1978 and headed west. As early life, just as San Diego today— or Philadelphia and Rizzo or even she crossed the border of San Diego, less provincial, more progressive—still Portland and Vera Katz. The city she took one look at the city and the clings to some of its old conventions. and its politician, their triumphs and Pacific beyond and fell captive. Both the state senator and the city tragedies, become almost one. Over the next three decades, San have found an effective way to meld San Diego and Christine Kehoe Diego would not only redirect her what was then and what is now. share such a path. The city and the life and give it a whole new shape While it’s true that Senator Kehoe state senator from its historic center but she would alter the contours of is the first openly gay elected official grew up together, you might say, each San Diego, first in her role as a city in San Diego history, no one would one shedding an early identity that councilwoman and then as a member ever describe her as a LGBT firebrand. didn’t quite fit. of the state Assembly and finally as a The style she prefers is a far cry from There was the conservative state senator dedicated to sustainable in-your-face. Congenial, sleeves rolled military town full of retirees who had growth, environmental protection, up, her approach is a nod to both her come to enjoy the golf and sun, a education reform and civil rights for small town, Catholic upbringing and place not terribly kind to unions and the LGBT community. her later baptism as a San Diego AIDS gays. For better and worse, that San “Coming West to reinvent activist. Diego seemed eternally stuck in the yourself is one of those enduring “A lot of my straight constituents 1950s. myths and clichés—I know,” Senator tell me, “I thought you’d be a single And there was the young woman Kehoe said. “But when I look back, issue candidate, and you’re not.’ from the small blue-collar town of that’s pretty much what happened They’re pleasantly surprised by that. Troy, New York, who was raised in an in my life. California does change I’ve never felt a great deal of tension between me being a lesbian and a Irish Catholics.” kept nagging at her. The marriage politician. Yes, we do bills that benefit Kehoe says she bordered on the soured. She wondered what was out the LGBT community but not as goody two-shoes, and she remembers there—beyond Troy. A high school many as you would think, especially her world turning inside out when friend happened to be moving to San now that we’ve made so many The Beatles came to America. Each Diego. She hitched a ride. advances in civil rights. of her siblings chipped in a dollar and At the time, she barely thought “Being high profile isn’t one of bought the “Meet the Beatles” album of herself a feminist, much less a my goals. I’d much rather start the from Woolworths. She started wearing lesbian. Her first job in San Diego, program, find the funding, build the bell-bottom jeans and pointy black at the Center for Women’s Studies road. I consider it my job to listen to boots and gave her brother a mop top and Services, put her in touch with my constituents.” cut. “They were so fresh and new, feminist social issues and victims of It’s not so simple separating the and their music just exploded into our rape and domestic violence. Several politicization of Christine Kehoe from of her co-workers were lesbians. the embrace of her sexual identity. “When I got married, I never To understand the process, delayed gave any thought to being lesbian. as it was, it helps to understand the I attribute that to my Irish-Catholic world of her childhood. Nothing upbringing. It was at the women’s more apt could be said about Troy center where I began to understand than it was a safe place to grow up. A my deeper sexuality. The women town of 25,000 residents set along the there were really good to me, and they eastern bank of the Hudson River, it probably understood more about the sits in the shadow of the Albany state process I was undergoing than I did.” capitol and was known as “Collar In the summer of 1980, during City”—for all the shirts and textiles a visit back home, she came out to manufactured there. her brothers and sisters. Even though It wasn’t enough that you were they were all “very accepting,” she Catholic. The Italians lived in one never addressed the matter with neighborhood, and the Poles lived in her parents. They died without the another and the Irish separate from conversation ever taking place. “I that. “Our neighborhood was all Irish guess you could say it was sort of a Catholic except the house two doors “Don’t ask, don’t tell’ type of situation. away, where the father was Protestant My parents wouldn’t have discussed and the kids went to public schools. heterosexuality. So to discuss That was our idea of diversity. All of homosexuality, it wasn’t in their us attended St. Joseph’s, the parish makeup.” school a block and a half away.” lives. Between our Catholic education Kehoe’s transition from women’s Kehoe was born in 1950, a middle and the conservative social values issues with a strong feminist bent to child with two older siblings and two of our parents, The Beatles busted the cause of gay and lesbian equal younger ones. Her father worked 42 through. It felt like liberation, really.” rights did not occur in a vacuum. years for General Electric in nearby She joined the debate team in By the early 1980s, gay men were Schenectady, her mother at the state high school but hated it. Never once dying of AIDS in a San Diego that capitol. They were Democrats but not did she think of running for class seemed not to know or care about the in any liberal sense. “Our dinner table president or treasurer. Then she got epidemic. If the problem was sealed conversations were that government married at the age of twenty two and in silence, Kehoe now had a forum should help the poor, the little guy. graduated college with a BA degree to urge it out in the open. She had My parents weren’t union members, in English. What lay ahead seemed been named the editor of the San but my mother would recall how fated: children and an everyday job. Diego Gayzette, a community weekly unfair work could be for women and But something not yet definable covering arts and local politics and gay night life. There she met Julie medical institutions had begun to take be her chance for political office. She Warren, the graphic designer for the on the patina of hip. Coffee houses knew the community, knew the issues. paper. Twenty seven years later, they and gift shops, many of them infused Strangely, only seven percent of share a life together that they never by the energy of a growing LGBT registered voters polled in the Third foresaw at that time. community, had added a whole new District knew who Kehoe was. Kehoe launched AIDS onto the flavor to the business strip. The gay community, sensing front page of the Gayzette even as Hillcrest and the rest of the Third the moment had finally arrived for the Union Tribune kept mum about District was represented by City San Diego to elect its first openly gay the stricken sailors and Marines who, Councilman John Hartley, a realtor public official, couldn’t wait to dig in. out of fear, were failing to report who took note of Kehoe’s hard work as But its leaders, who had spent years their illnesses to the military. She the executive director of the business fighting for the formation of a political sent reporters to Balboa Hospital, association and brought her on staff. district where gays and lesbians held where some U.S. Navy doctors sway, wanted one more “look-see” were outing AIDS patients to the before they committed any money. command, violating doctor-patient Kehoe could read their confidentiality. ambivalence. She preferred tee shirts “Men in their twenties were dying and jeans and a hair style that, in her at home on the couch without anyone words, had come and gone. “I know knowing about it, often without them they were all thinking, ‘Look at her getting any real treatment. That little hair!’ They were so disappointed that weekly changed the mainstream. The I wasn’t more glamorous.” But she issue became front and center.” won them over with her sincerity and With the paper losing money straight forward approach.