Judith Light

Do you guys remember Judith Light from that TV show Who’s the Boss? I hear she is now on Ugly Betty.

Wanted to pass along her a portion of her touching speech that was sent to me from my friend Joe.

The Legacy Awards:
A Gala to Benefit the Outfest Legacy Project for LGBT Film Preservation
Thursday, October 4, 2007

Judith Light’s acceptance speech

Thank you for that lovely and generous introduction. Listening to you, it is awfully difficult not to hear the subtext as “Wow; this lady has been around a really long time.”

And thank you for this honor, which is truly one of the most special I have ever received because the Legacy Project itself has a very powerful significance to me.

People are forever asking why I am so involved in the GLBT community. The answer is always: my response to the way AIDS took away so many people dear to us and to my outrage at the way this country was so viciously insensitive and uncaring and, of course, because of Herb and Jonathan who have been my family for nearly thirty years and don’t have the same rights in this country that Robert and I do. All of this is, of course, true. But it also is incomplete.

I am also deeply connected to this community because you are my teachers, you are my role models.

You risk everything to be authentic. Do you know how rare that is in our culture, authenticity?!

I have to be clear about this. While I feel an empathic bond with every single GLBT person being marginalized in this country, who I am talking to and about are you people, people who are OUT and who are willing to risk in order to lead. Watching you, and acknowledging you over the years, I have simply been unable to avoid challenging myself to pull myself up to even some semblance of the courage to be authentic and take risks that I see in you.

Like everyone’s friends and families, it is essential that this country BE what it says it is. In truth it is what I actually think it wants to be but which it absolutely at this point in history is not!

There is no person, straight or gay who should not be on the forefront of this fight. If the Constitution does not protect your rights, it is only a matter of time until some right of mine becomes inconvenient for whatever majority happens to be in power for the moment.

Not only do I stand with you, now and forever; I am eternally grateful to you –

For your teaching, for your modeling, and for expanding your experience of family sufficiently to include me as a part of it.

Thank you.