Wanda Sykes has a profile written by reporter Ari Karpel in the latest Advocate magazine, which is now a monthly. There are some interesting tidbits into the newest members of the Out Celebrity pantheon which include Ellen Degeneres, Neil Patrick Harris, T.R. Knight, Rosie O'Donnell and Sir Ian McKellen (notice anything in common between these bold-faced names? Yup, they're all white.)
Happily, the author doesn't repeat "the zombie meme" when he discusses Proposition 8 and Black people in the article:
On November 4, still riding high on the joy of their recent nuptials, Sykes and Alexandra were lifted even higher at the news of Barack Obama’s victory. But just a few hours later, like so many progressive Californians, they experienced emotional whiplash as it became evident that Prop. 8 had passed.
As an African-American in a week-old marriage, it stung Sykes even more when reports started coming in that black voters had overwhelmingly sided with the antigay measure. (Initial reports that 70% of African-Americans voters supported Prop. 8 have recently been debunked; a National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute study has shown that a more accurate number is 57%–59%.) She said it felt as if her family was being attacked. “Like, hey I’m sitting here living my life and suddenly the government -- the people, really -- walked in the door to our living room and said, ‘No, you’re not allowed to do this.’ And that’s frightening.”
At first, the comedian says, she felt guilty and wondered if she should have been more outspoken. “I mean, I wrote the checks and signed the petitions and did all that, but could I have done more?” Then she realized that, for her, doing more would mean one thing: coming out publicly. It was a wake-up call, she says. “Now I have to be in your face.” So, that night, she and Alexandra discussed it. “I said, ‘This is what I feel I have to do,’ and she was totally supportive. She was like, ‘OK, let’s do this.’” The next morning, Sykes called someone she’d met years before but barely knew -- out gay actor Doug Spearman (Noah’s Arc), who is African-American and who, as Sykes remembered, served on Equality California’s board of directors.
“I had no idea Wanda was gay,” Spearman says today. “But she is a huge hero of mine—as an actress, as a comedian, and as a working black person.” Perhaps that’s why he didn’t believe it really was Sykes who’d left him a voice mail that morning. “I thought, Somebody’s playing a little tricky trick on me.”
[...]
Sykes was scheduled to perform at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas the weekend of November 15, when post–Prop. 8 rallies were planned at city halls and statehouses across the country, and she intended to attend the local demonstration with friends. She’d gone to marches in Los Angeles in the days immediately following the election, but no one paid much attention to her. Las Vegas was a different story, though. Just when Sykes thought the speeches were over and people were preparing to march, one of the event’s organizers announced, “There’s a rumor Wanda Sykes is out there.” So, as she’d done thousands of times before, Sykes jumped onto the stage. Only this time, she told no jokes and used no profanity.
“It was from the heart,” she says today of her speech. “I just said what I said; I don’t really talk about my sexual orientation. I wasn’t in the closet, but I was just living my life. Everybody who knows me personally knows I’m gay. And that’s the way people should be able to live their lives, really. We shouldn’t have to be standing out here demanding something we automatically should have as citizens of this country.” She ended the impromptu presentation with a statement of pride: “I’m proud to be a woman, I’m proud to be a black woman, and I’m proud to be gay. Let’s go get our damn equal rights.”
By the time she’d returned to her hotel room, news that Sykes had come out of the closet was on the CNN crawl. “I was like, Damn, whatever happened to ‘What happens in Vegas…?’”
It's a great profile, you should head on over to Advocate.com and read the whole thing now!
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