Mike McNamee, a gay leather man who owned the popular Stompers Boots in San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood for many years, died August 23 at California Pacific Medical Center after a brief illness, friends said. He was 79.
Longtime peace and justice advocate David McReynolds, the first openly gay man to run for president of the United States, died August 17 in New York City.
Fakir Musafar, an icon of the modern body modification culture, died at his home in Menlo Park August 1. He announced in May that he was fighting advanced lung cancer. He was 87.
Paul Lorch, a gay man who, as editor of the Bay Area Reporter in the early 1980s, opposed closing gay bathhouses to stem the spread of AIDS and published a list of gays he said were "enemies" of the community, died July 21. He was 86.
Tom Gallagher, the country's first openly gay Foreign Service officer who was forced to quit because of his sexual orientation but was later reinstated, died July 8 in Tinton Falls, New Jersey. He was 77.
