Wanda Sykes Comes Out at Las Vegas Rally
Wanda Sykes said Barack Obama's victory felt like a "leap forward," but Proposition 8's passage felt like getting "dragged 12 feet back."
Popular actress/comedian decries Proposition 8 and announces marriage
By Matthew B. Zeidman
LAS VEGAS (Hollywood Today) 11/17/08 – “Evan Almighty” actress Wanda Sykes expressed her outrage regarding the recent passage of California’s Proposition 8 on Saturday, decrying the piece of legislation that banned gay marriage in the state and revealing publicly for the first time that she was, herself, gay and married to her partner.
“I’m proud to be a woman, I’m proud to be a black woman, and I’m proud to be gay,” Sykes told a crowd gathered in Las Vegas to rally for gay rights. The hardened comedian explained that she didn’t feel the need to discuss her sexuality with the media before Proposition 8 was passed on Election Day, but now needed to “get in [the collective] face” of those who supported such a measure.
Sykes, 44, also revealed that she had wed her girlfriend in California less than two weeks before the new law went into effect.
“When my wife and I leave California, I want to have my marriage also recognized in Nevada, in Arizona, all the way to New York,” she said, adding that the gay community’s galvanization over the state ban would lead to grassroots action on the federal level.
Sykes recently filmed a public service announcement for the Ad Council’s ThinkB4YouSpeak.com, in which she encouraged a group of teenage boys in a pizzeria not to use the term “gay” as a synonym for “dumb or stupid,” citing the offensive nature of such comments. Fashion plate Hilary Duff also recorded a clip for the Web site’s TV and Internet campaign, admonishing a teenage girl in a clothes boutique for calling a friend’s top “gay.”