How time flies! This is my last column of 2010, and looking back I realize there were a few stories that got away or weren't able to be followed closely to their end point. Other stories have had some interesting developments that we just haven't been able to get in the paper. As the year closes, it's a good time to "catch you up" on some of these stories.
Fred Karger for President
In April, I wrote about gay activist Fred Karger, who fought valiantly but unsuccessfully to save the landmark gay bar, the Boom Boom Room, and to secure same-sex marriage rights in California. Setting his sights on the highest office in the land, Karger had decided to look into becoming the first openly gay man to run for U.S. president. I talked to him over lunch at the Cottage and at the time he was getting very excited about a trip to New Hampshire and the launch of this enterprise, which he termed "exploratory." At the time, he said he was encouraged to run for president (in 2012) because of all the support, monetary and otherwise, from his Californians Against Hate campaign, which has taken on the Mormon Church's efforts to overturn same-sex marriage rights in states where it exists, and provided much of the funding for Proposition 8, which took away same-sex marriage rights in 2009.
