I am honored to be speaking this weekend at the National Council for the Social Studies Annual Conference (NCSS), made up of 5,000 teachers from across the county. I will be talking about my history-making campaign for president back in 2012, when I ran as the first openly gay major party candidate to do so. 

I will be joining many other prominent featured speakers, including Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, Washington, D.C. Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, Dr. Richard Haas, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. This engagement was arranged by the prestigious History UnErased, and I will talk about my roller coaster run for president 

It was a hard-fought, two-and-a-half year, full-time campaign in the Republican primaries. I appeared on six state ballots, gave hundreds of speeches, did thousands of media interviews and attracted thousands of volunteers, donors, and voters. In fact, when the primaries ended, I had received more votes than two former governors, Jon Huntsman, Jr. (Utah) and Gary Johnson (New Mexico). 

My constant message to the LGBTQ community was, you can do anything you want to do in life, even run for president of the United States. I heard from so many people young and old that I was giving them newfound hope.

Eight years later, when openly gay Mayor Pete Buttigieg ran for president, I endorsed him in February 2019, served on his National Finance Committee, and did a lot of surrogate work on his behalf. We developed a strong bond, being the only two openly gay candidates to ever run for president. He told me, “You’re a trailblazer who made it a little easier for those who follow your path.”

I applied pressure on many of the nation’s largest LGBTQ organizations to endorse Pete early, when it would make a difference. I wrote op-eds in Newsweek and the Advocate urging the LGBTQ Victory Fund, HRC, The Task Force and many others to support Pete. Eventually the reluctant Victory Fund came around and endorsed Pete at a big splashy campaign event in Brooklyn on June 28, 2019 during WorldPride. 

That early support from the nation’s sole organization to help propel openly LGBTQ candidates to victory, made a huge difference in Pete’s success.

I was not as fortunate. One of the first meetings I had was with Chuck Wolfe, the then head of the Victory Fund in January 2010. He blurted out, “we’re not going to help you!” And true to his word, they actually worked to hinder my historic run. They made me submit a number of applications including a 56-page campaign plan and budget. Several months after delivering it, Chuck told me they would not even put my endorsement to a vote. “You don’t want to know,” he told me. “Yes, I do,” I replied.

I have met with or spoken to all of his successors at the Victory Fund, offering my help and asking for some sort of recognition of my historic campaign. Finally in 2018, after a lot of negotiations, then-President Annise Parker gave me one sentence in their Under Our History section on their website. 

I have been an LGBTQ activist and major donor since I worked closely with David Mixner to defeat the Briggs Initiative in 1978, which would have outlawed gay teachers in California. I spent 30 years as a political consultant. Since 2008, I became the only one, through my organization Californians Against Hate, to fight back against the mega donors to California’s Proposition 8 and other anti-same-sex marriage campaigns. 

I shamed millionaires and billionaires and even the all-powerful Mormon Church, who funded and ran all these hateful campaigns. The New York Times published a full page column three years ago on all I did to help gay marriage become the law of the land, “Cancel Culture Works. We Wouldn’t Have Marriage Equality Without It.” 

So, I’ve earned my stripes. That is why I find it ironic that while I am speaking to the 5,000-member NCSS gathering in Washington, the same weekend that the LGBTQ Victory Fund is holding its annual Victory Institute gathering a few blocks away, while they continue to shun me and my rightful place in history.

Fred Karger is the first openly gay major party candidate to run for president.

Thank you, Mayor Muriel Bowser, for all you have done for our beautiful city. I am proud to say I have been a supporter of yours since you first announced your run for City Council in Ward 4, when you took some of my suggestions for your first speech. I have known since then what an amazing woman, politician, leader, and now mother, you are. You have moved our city forward in so many ways no one could have anticipated when you were first elected.

You have always proven your mettle, and your ability to rise above the chaos, and done the right thing for all the people of the District. Whether it was during economic uncertainty created by others, the pandemic, the backlash against police after the murder of George Floyd, during the first Trump administration, or the ongoing crisis, continuing today after the felon was elected for a second time. This time, contrary to his first term, he has even more venal people around him. They are acting out their fascist beliefs, and directing him, as he threatens the very basis of home rule. You have stood your ground, and done it with grace and smarts. You managed to work through the budget crisis, and Congress’s attempt to derail all the progress you have made, by not letting us spend a billion dollars of our own money. You have been walking a tightrope, and managing to keep our city from falling into his hands.  Not everyone has understood how difficult that has been. 

Then you managed to get James Comer (R-Ken.), chair of the House Oversight Committee, to support your efforts to have 180 acres of valuable land, the RFK site, turned over to the District for redevelopment. After that, you achieved your goal of getting the Commanders to agree to move back to D.C.; in the process securing the largest private investment ever for the District, the $3.7 billion the team’s owners agreed to pay to build a new domed stadium. That being only the catalyst for an entire new community with 6,000 units of housing, including affordable housing, a supermarket, hotel, sports complex for students in D.C., parks, nature trails, and more. 

While balancing budgets and fighting crime, you have had to deal with the felon in the White House every day. Some accused you of acquiescing to the felon when what you were actually doing was saving our city from the even worse disasters he could visit upon us.

You understood to rebuild the economy Trump and the pandemic worked to destroy, you needed to look at other options. You rightly determined part of what D.C. needed to grow was a sports economy. When Monumental Sports owner Ted Leonsis was trying to move the Capitals and his business out of the District for pure greed; you worked behind the scenes and successfully kept them here. Prior to that you engineered a public/private partnership between the city, and DC United, to get Audi field built. 

Then besides sports you have worked with the private sector to begin the work of converting empty office buildings in the downtown area, into apartments, which will generate new needed taxes for the District. You oversaw the reconstruction of the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge, and the redevelopment of the South Capitol Street corridor. Along with all this you have overseen the rebuilding of schools, sports fields, recreation centers, and libraries across the city. In the past five years you have added nearly 10,000 affordable housing units in the District, built new shelters for the homeless, and a new hospital in Southeast D.C. 

You have fought for fairness and equality for the LGBTQ community. You didn’t just walk in our parades, but worked to make them successful. You added budget money to build a new LGBTQ community center, and money to support WorldPride, while the felon’s policies threatened it in every way.  After years of many of us trying to get the city to take responsibility, and fund, the annual High Heel Race, you were the mayor who finally agreed to do it. You have always stood proudly with the LGBTQ community that I am a part of, in large and small ways, both in public and privately. 

You now have one more year to serve as mayor, and I can’t wait to see what you will yet accomplish. It will not be an easy time, as we saw the day after you announced you would not run again. You, and we, faced the tragic shooting of the two National Guard members from West Virginia, who walked our streets at the felon’s orders. But I am confident your energy and drive, your smarts, and understanding of people, will allow you to deal with this and won’t let you stop working for us until the minute the next mayor of the District of Columbia is sworn in at noon, Jan. 1, 2027. 

It is clear to all of us, that person, he, or she, will have very large shoes to fill. Mayor Bowser, we all owe you a debt of gratitude for all you have done for D.C. I for one look forward to all you will do in the future; in whatever area you choose to work. I know your work is far from done.

Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist.

Today, on World AIDS Day, we honor the resilience, courage, and dignity of people living with HIV everywhere especially refugees, asylum seekers, and queer displaced communities across East Africa and the world.

For many, living with HIV is not just a health journey it is a journey of navigating stigma, borders, laws, discrimination, and survival.

Yet even in the face of displacement, uncertainty, and exclusion, queer people living with HIV continue to rise, thrive, advocate, and build community against all odds.

To every displaced person living with HIV:

• Your strength inspires us.

• Your story matters.

• You are worthy of safety, compassion, and the full right to health.

• You deserve a world where borders do not determine access to treatment, where identity does not determine dignity, and where your existence is celebrated not criminalized.

Let today be a reminder that:

• HIV is not a crime.

• Queer identity is not a crime.

• Seeking safety is not a crime.

• Stigma has no place in our communities.

• Access to treatment, care, and protection is a human right.

As we reflect, we must recommit ourselves to building systems that protect not punish displaced queer people living with HIV. We must amplify their voices, invest in inclusive healthcare, and fight the inequalities that fuel vulnerability.

Hope is stronger when we build it together.

Let’s continue to uplift, empower, and walk alongside those whose journeys are too often unheard.

Today we remember.

Today we stand together.

Today we renew hope.

Abraham Junior lives in the Gorom Refugee Settlement in South Sudan.