Gay Games Ambassador Judith Light in Advocate Hall of Fame

The Advocate is celebrating its 45th anniversary and is naming a member of the Hall of Fame for each year. Gay Games Ambassador Judith Light is the hero for 1996 (hat tip to Outsports):


It’s maybe hard now to remember a time on television and in movies where straight women didn’t have gay best friends, HIV-positive sons, or transgender daughters. But actress Judith Light had no problem doing it early on. Throughout her lengthy career on stage and screen, Light’s choices for roles have reflected the actress's passions in real life, making her a true ally for LGBT people, and the right cover subject for a 1996 feature in The Advocate on straight females as allies.

Light played Jeanne White in the 1989 TV movie The Ryan White Story, which chronicled the life of a young boy who became a face of HIV/AIDS at a time when stigma and discrimination against people with HIV was rampant. In the soapy dramedy Ugly Betty, Light played media matriarch Claire Meade, mother of Rebecca Romijn’s transgender character, Alexis. She's even credited with helping former Who's the Boss? co-star Danny Pintauro to come out.

Off screen, Light has tirelessly raised funds and awareness for LGBT rights, as well as HIV. She has been aligned with several philanthropic and activist organizations like Broadway Cares; Equity Fights AIDS, the Matthew Shepard Foundation, the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, the Hetrick Martin School, and dozens of others.
-Michelle Garcia

Gay Games Ambassador Judith Light says "It Gets Better"

Gay Games Ambassador and actress Judith Light has produced this video for the "It Gets Better" project.

Visit our "It Gets Better" page HERE.

Outsports interview of Gay Games Ambassador Judith Light on Broadway performance

From Outsports:

What could a play about the roughest, toughest, most legendary coach in NFL history have to do with a gay audience? You might be surprised, but there’s plenty in the current Broadway run of “Lombardi on Broadway” to keep theatergoers of any sexual orientation intrigued and entertained.
At the top of that list is the performance of actress Judith Light who plays Vince’s wife, Marie. Light is best-known for her long-running stint as Angela Bower on the hit TV series, Who’s the Boss. Light has long been an advocate for the equality of gay and HIV-positive people. In fact, she said the overarching theme of Lombardi is exactly what drew her to the gay community in the late ‘80s and early ’90s.

“This was a community that rose to its feet as one body that had a vision and a goal to take care of its own,” she remembers. “They wouldn’t be dragged down by the AIDS epidemic and instead lifted themselves up in the world.”

“Lombardi on Broadway” is much the same, Light said. With football as the backdrop, the play explores the power of personal relationships and the importance of setting aside your own personal needs for the good of the many.

“It looks at human beings and how they operate with each other,” Light said. “How people operate as a team, what happens to people when they have their own desires and agendas, and what happens when you’re willing to surrender those to the vision of one person.”

Keep reading HERE.

Interview with Judith Light for World AIDS Day

From a Towleroad interview with Gay Games Ambassador, actress Judith Light:

KS: Do you think that all of your political activism and charity work — which is so centered on lesbians and bisexuals and gays and transexuals ...

JL: ... and the queer and the questioning .... I know, I know. Oh, honey, I just like queer. Let’s just say queer. Queer is so great.

KS: Okay - all of your queer stuff you’re involved in — is that where your own maternalism can be expressed? Why have you chosen the queer community as the focus for your activism?

Light2 JL: Maybe some of it is maternal but it is more about family in a more general sense. And about inspiration. And courage. And justice. I don’t understand why everyone wouldn’t love and accept everyone. Now I hope that doesn’t sound like Pollyanna but I really truly mean that. I don’t get it. I think we are all here to offer each other support with graciousness and generosity to get us all through this life. We are here to give each other as much joy as possible.

From the time I was a little girl when I went to a performing arts camp in New Hope, Pennsylvania, I have been supported by the gay community. The performers who would come down from New York to be our teachers were mostly gay and I knew then that they were there to watch out for me. Then as time went on I developed this whole theatre family which was mostly gay. My managers — who have been together as a couple for 30 years — are gay. And suddenly back during the height of the AIDS crisis, all my friends started dying and two presidents of the United States were not saying anything about it and you better believe if it were a good-ole-boys-white-boy disease it would have all been handled in about five seconds. We talk about this country being a country of compassion and I see how my gay family is being treated! Well, I had to take a stand. I had to speak up. I had to.

Then I see this community — this gay family of mine — come up to a whole other level of dignity in the way that they are dealing with the epidemic. Gay men back then began to come out and stand up in the face of such divisiveness and vitriol and started to rise like the phoenix from the ashes. God! It still makes me tear up.

And I thought, you people are our leaders. You are teaching the straight community how to have courage. My manager Herb says everybody has something to come out about. We straight people just have to figure out what it is for us. Because when you do you have a kind of freedom in your life — a kind of authenticity — you can’t have otherwise. When I look at the gay community I say to them, “Please, please please — know who you are and what you mean to people like me.” That’s what I desperately want this community to understand. It’s not about — oh, let me help you. It’s you who inspire us. It’s you who are are the leaders. It’s you who show us the way. When our friends were dying they were fighting and storming the FDA for drugs and — this is the paradox and the dichotomy — they were at the same time surrendering and filled with grace. They were living like Carlos Castaneda talks about — with death on their shoulders. And they were magnificent. This is so important to me — I want the young people in this community to know their history, to know that they come from a community of heroes.

Read the full interview HERE.