Part 4: Our Hall of Fame

Any celebration of the The Advocate's founding in 1967 must honor the heroes for LGBT rights that we've covered for 45 years. With one honoree named per year, the list will be announced in parts and culminate in an event in Los Angeles this month.

BY Advocate Contributors

March 28 2012 11:16 AM ET

HEROES 1985 DAVID GOODSTEIN X560 | ADVOCATE.COM

David Goodstein, the influential former publisher of The Advocate, died in 1985 after transforming the local Los Angeles newspaper he had bought into a national newsmagazine covering the LGBT rights movement.

Goodstein's career seemed set after he founded a computerized investment company and then joined Wells Fargo Bank, which Goodstein said fired him when executives realized he was gay. Goodstein used outrage and his financial success on Wall Street to help fund a long list of causes for the expansion of LGBT rights. He bought The Advocate; founded the Whitman-Radclyffe Foundation, a gay rights organization devoted to educating the public; and he cofounded the group Concerned Voters of California to defeat a proposed law that would have banned supporters of gay rights from teaching or working in schools.

Goodstein is the creator of the Advocate Experience, a weeklong empowerment conference for gays and lesbians, a central mission of his life.
-Lucas Grindley