Gay politics in L.A. lacking leaders

The LA Weekly's Christopher Lisotta describes a leadership vacuum in L.A. gay politics since the depatures of Joel Wachs (to New York) and Jackie Goldberg (Sacramento). "No openly gay candidate has been elected in Los Angeles in three years," he writes. One angle not given much weight in the story is the deaths of gay leadership stalwarts of the recent past such as Rand Schrader, the late judge for whom Schrader Boulevard in Hollywood is named. Another issue, says Torie Osborn, executive director of the Liberty Hill Foundation: "What I think you have is people focusing on their private lives, building their families, building gay and lesbian organizations, and making their individual paths within the churches, the synagogues, the workplaces.”