The former L.A. bureau chief for the Washington Post and founding president of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association died Sunday after a long battle with cancer. Most recently, Aarons directed the Sexual Orientation Issues in the News program at USC's Annenberg School for Communication and was a journalism professor there. In 1991 he co-authored the radio docudrama "Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers" with Geoffrey Cowan, Annenberg's dean. Aarons’ book Prayers for Bobby, about a family coping with the suicide of a gay son, was published in 1995 by HarperCollins. He also wrote an opera libretto, "Monticello," about the affair between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings.