(San Francisco Chronicle) A day after a bill by San Francisco Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, that sought to make California's marriage laws gender-neutral came up four votes shy of passage in the state Assembly, many pointed to telling aspects of the defeat that they said make it improbable that either legislative chamber would return to the issue this term.

"It's dead for the year," said Sen. Carole Migden, D-San Francisco, who lobbied persistently for Leno's bill this week. The only alternative, she said, would be a so-called gut-and-amend procedure where a bill is stripped of its content and filled with a different subject.

"The Democrats are not so emboldened by Arnold (Schwarzenegger's) weakness as to believe there is no electoral danger out there," said Bruce Cain, director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley. "The gay community matters, but they're not going to carry elections in the Central Valley. You can't count on those guys being there in the same way you can count on the teachers' unions or the police and firefighters."

"The Democrat politicians' push for gay marriage and bringing it up for a floor vote will only serve to fuel the drive for marriage protection in the state Constitution," said Randy Thomasson, president of the Campaign for Children and Families, a conservative group opposed to gay marriage. "The threat to marriage is now obvious: It's not just from judges. It's from the majority party at the state Capitol."