Power: The Straight Scoop on Thirty-Five Gay Power Players

12. Dr. Stephen Boswell
Executive Director, Fenway Community Health
A nationally recognized HIV/AIDS expert, Boswell heads Fenway Community Health, the largest provider of HIV services in New England. He’s also affiliated with Harvard, is on staff at Beth Israel Deaconess, and served on Bill Clinton’s Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS.

13. Mary Breslauer
Democratic Consultant
Longtime political scenester Breslauer led Tom Reilly’s 1998 charge for attorney general and was an original host of WFNX’s gay-focused One In Ten radio program. Last year, she was a major lobbying force for same-sex marriage and advised the Kerry campaign on gay and lesbian issues. She’s also on the board of the Human Rights Campaign.

14. Gary Daffin and Arline Isaacson
Cochairs, Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus
The caucus today led by Daffin and Isaacson has been fighting for gay and lesbian rights for more than 30 years, helping win passage of the country’s second gay and lesbian civil rights law in the ’80s and a state domestic partnership law in the ’90s. Isaacson is a media go-to girl on same-sex marriage while Daffin, who also cofounded the Black Men’s Health Alliance, is a member of what must be one of the world’s least-populous groups: He’s a self-described “black Catholic homosexual from Alabama.”

16. Elyse Cherry
President, Boston Community Venture Fund
Cherry is on the board of the civil rights group MassEquality.org, raises money for breast cancer research, and packs a socially conscious punch as head of her multimillion-dollar venture fund, which invests in companies that do good while making money.