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By Rex Wockner
Taylor was presented with GLAAD's Vanguard Award for promoting gay equality. In her acceptance speech, she said: "It's the first award I've received from a gay organization and I'm honored and just tickled. "I started my activism in the eighties when a new disease emerged that was quickly and inexplicably killing people. Worse than the virus there was the terrible discrimination and prejudice it left in its wake. Suddenly it made gay people stop being human beings and start becoming the enemy. I knew somebody had to do something. For God's sake, our president didn't even utter the word for years into the epidemic. So I got involved." Taylor continued:
"All of us should be treated the same, and GLAAD knows that. Why shouldn't gay people be allowed to marry? Those against gay marriages say marriage should only be between a man and a woman. “God, I, of all people know that [the remainder of the sentence was inaudible due to an audience outburst]. I feel that any home where there is love constitutes a family and all families should have the same legal rights, including the right to marry and have or adopt children! "Why shouldn't gay people be able to live as open and freely as everybody else? What it comes down to, ultimately, is love. How can anything bad come out of love? The bad stuff comes out of mistrust, misunderstanding and, God knows, from hate and from ignorance. Thank God GLAAD works to fight this. “During my life I've seen many things, good and bad, but the bad things never came out of loving acts, loving gestures or loving relationships. That's why I'm here tonight -- to celebrate you and your families. And to tell you to hang in there and to say, once and for all of us, long live love." Actress Carrie Fisher presented the award to Taylor and commented:
Fisher added: "My mother really wanted to be here tonight but she has a new boyfriend and wanted to keep him as far away from Elizabeth as possible. I'm just kidding. No, seriously, she's somewhere with Whitney Houston." In a special video tribute, Hillary Clinton said: "Elizabeth is a legend, a star who has made us laugh and cry and think hard for years. But she's also shown us not only the best of entertainment but the best of humanity. By word and example she has taught us that an injustice toward any of us is an injustice toward of all of us. ... Congratulations on this well-deserved award." Among other memorable moments, Leeza Gibbons, who won an award for outstanding TV talk show, took a swipe at radio star Dr. Laura Schlessinger, who is under fire for calling gays "biological errors" and opposing gay equal rights. "Dr. Laura could use some coaching in learning the difference between the Bible and the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, those documents which are supposed to guarantee rights and protections and privileges for all of us but apparently not for gays and lesbians," Gibbons said.
Other award winners included the film Being John Malkovich, the TV shows Will & Grace and Dawson's Creek, the TV movie Execution of Justice and the play Media, the Musical. Will & Grace's Debra Messing called her show's GLAAD Award for outstanding TV comedy series "the Academy Award of homosexual trophies." |
Actor Sean Hayes of Will & Grace at the 11th Annual GLAAD Media
Awards April 15 in Los Angeles. Will & Grace won the Outstanding
TV Comedy Series award 
Actress Julie Louis-Dreyfus of Seinfeld fame at GLAAD's 11th
Annual Media Awards April 15 in Los Angeles 
Elizabeth Taylor accepts GLAAD's Vanguard Award for promoting gay
rights 
Actress Sharon Stone presents actress Anne Heche with the Stephen
F. Kolzak Award for outstanding contribution in combating
homophobia 
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