Watch: Kerry Washington’s inspirational same-sex marriage speech
By Josh Haggis
Kerry Washington has made an impassioned speech in support of same-sex marriage.
The Scandal star made the speech while accepting the Vanguard Award – which is presented to a celebrity who has helped promote LGBT rights in the entertainment community – at the GLAAD Media Awards over the weekend (March 21).
Washington compared the ongoing battle for same-sex marriage in the US to the fight for interracial marriage, suggesting that it’s hypocritical for people in the black community to say that they don’t believe in gay marriage, considering a few short decades ago their right to marry was restricted by a similarly outdated law.
“Up until then, heterosexual people of different races couldn’t marry who they wanted to marry either,” she said. “So, when black people today say that they don’t believe in gay marriage, the first thing that I say is, ‘Please don’t let anybody try to get you to vote against your own best interest by feeding you messages of hate.'”
“And then I say, ‘People use to say things about that about you and your love.'”
She went on to argue that there needs to be more LGBT representation in the media, insisting that the entertainment industry needs to reflect that “being an ‘other’ is the norm”.
“We need more LGBT representation in the media. We need more LGBT characters and more LGBT storytelling,” she insisted. “We need more diverse LGBT representation, and by that I mean lots of different kinds of LGBT people living all different kinds of lives. And this is big – we need more employment of LGBT people in front of and behind the camera.”
“Women, poor people, people of color, people with disabilities, immigrants, gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, trans people, intersex people: we have been pitted against each other and made to feel like there are limited seats at the table for those of us who fall into the category of ‘other’,” she said.
“In the real world being an ‘other’ is the norm, in the real world the only norm is unique-ness and our media must reflect that,” she added.
Meanwhile, big winners at this year’s GLAAD Media Awards included How To Get Away With Murder and Ellen DeGeneres – find out more here.
Watch Washington’s full speech below:
[youtube height=”HEIGHT” width=”WIDTH”]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruv8As-_CMg&t=55[/youtube]
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