The buzz was even bigger than usual when Out magazine’s annual Out100 list came out in early November. Why? Because the decision to name President Barack Obama Out’s Ally of the Year and subsequently have him grace the cover of the magazine made him the first president to ever pose for an LGBT publication. The whole country felt the news, but here in Las Vegas we had even more reason to celebrate – local political activist Derek Washington made it to the Out100 list as well. All of this begs the question: what makes these two men so special?

With the next presidential election less than a year away, now really does seem like a great time to recap what President Obama has done for the LGBT community. This is the president who oversaw the following: the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell”, getting an order on the books to prohibit federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, the passage of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act (the first federal LGBT law), and more.

“One of the reasons I got involved in politics was to help deliver on our promise that we’re all created equal, and that no one should be excluded from the American dream just because of who they are,” said President Obama in his interview with Out.

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But would he actually come out in support of equal marriage while in office? Remember, this is the same politician who came into the White House reaffirming his position that marriage was between a man and a woman. Yet by the time he was campaigning for his second term, Americans knew they were voting for the country’s first pro-equal marriage president.

How fitting then that it would be this president who would witness the legalization of same-sex marriage across the country in the summer of 2015. Indeed, President Obama described the Supreme Court decision on Obergefell v. Hodges as a “victory for America.”
Although he only has a much smaller platform at his disposal, Derek Washington is also trying to grasp that “victory”. This Las Vegas-based political activist became active in the Democratic Party in 2008 and boasts an impressive CV that lists his efforts as new media and diversity outreach consultant for Aid for AIDS Nevada and chairman of Stonewall Democrats of Southern Nevada.

In 2014, the newly formed Black Democratic Empowerment Project came into being with Washington as its president. The organization’s mission is to “educate and empower the black community politically and economically.” Out quotes Washington as saying he’s the “only gay person heading up a black Democratic partisan organization”, but that he hopes he won’t be the last.

We know this won’t be the last we’ll hear of him.