Gwen Araujo’s mother Sylvia Guerrero, film producer/activist lawyer Gloria Allred and actor J. D. Pardone, who played Araujo in the award winning film “A Girl Like Me” at the GLAAD Awards at the St. Francis Ho

The 18th annual GLAAD Media Awards ceremony was held at the Westin St. Francis hotel on April 28. For the third consecutive year, the event was televised on Logo, MTV Networks’ cable channel for LGBT viewers and their allies. Each year GLAAD Media Awards recognizes and honors mainstream media for their fair, accurate, and inclusive representations of the LGBT community and the issues that affect their lives. After screening a video of GLAAD’s accomplishments and challenges, the evening’s emcee, actress Kim Coles, addressed the audience, saying, “I too am LGBT: I’m Lookin’ Good, Bitchen, and Terrific.” Coles is best known as a star in the sit-com, Living Single and the sketch show, In Living Color. She joked, “The struggle for gay marriage is not just a matter of civil rights. It’s a matter of my own damn social life, because I’ve tried to date a lot of gay men in my time.” She explained, “They’re better looking, very sexy, very smart, very stylish. You find me a straight man like that! Go on!”

Becki Newton, the bitch of TV’s Ugly Betty, presented the award for Outstanding TV Journalism to “The Equality Ride” by MTV News, a two-month bus tour that takes young adults age 18 to 28 across America to colleges that discriminate against queers. This year two buses went to 33 schools – many of them being so-called Christian colleges.

Actress Sally Kirkland said she was proud to say she has been a gay activist for 15 years, fighting for gay marriage and performing gay marriages. She said she married Adam to Steve in the movie, Adam and Steve. She said she wrote the ceremony herself. She is in progress of producing several gay movies. Kirkland presented the Outstanding Digital Journalism Award to salon.com for Alex Koppelman and “The Glass Closet.”

American Idol’s Katherine McPhee performed, saying that she grew up in an arts family. She said, “I very much appreciate the gay community and everything you guys do to support the arts. This is my way of showing my appreciation.” She sang “Home” from her record.

Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon received the Pioneer Award for their longtime activism. They are both in their eighties and have been together for 54 years. “We did a lot of things with the lesbian movement, and we had fun doing them,” said Lyon. “If we push and push and push, we can finally be better than second-class citizens. That means we have to be able to get married. And whether you think it’s a good thing or not, it means we have to have that right, if we want.” She added that they would really like to see this happen in their lifetime.

The chief executive officer of Planet Out, Karen Magee, as a former co-chair of GLAAD, said, the organization offered “a front row seat and a backstage pass to the advocacy, outreach, and education effort that makes this work so vital and so successful.” She welcomed the president of GLAAD, Neil Giuliano. He said queer visibility increased significantly in 2006 - with high profile individuals choosing to live openly and our issues being discussed all across the media on a daily basis. He gave as examples, everything from Paula Zahn on CNN to Rosie and the gang on The View to our financial advisor superstar, Suze Orman.

He brought up stories in the news about actors and political pundits using anti-gay slurs. “The voices of prejudice and intolerance that find their way into the media must be challenged,” he said. It should be noted that the top three anti-gay organizations have a budget in excess of $300 million; whereas GLAAD only has a $10 million budget.

Wilson Cruz (of TV’s My So-called Life and Rosario Dawson of the musical, Rent, presented the next award. “When I came out to my grandmother - who watched only Spanish TV – GLAAD educated my grandmother through these Spanish programs and allowed me to have conversations with her about my sexuality. She left this world a better person from the work that GLAAD does,” said Cruz.

Cruz and Dawson presented the Outstanding TV Movie Award to A Girl Like Me: the Gwen Araujo Story. Prosecuting Attorney Gloria Allred, Gwen’s mother, Sylvia Guerrero, and J.D. Pardo (who played the part of Gwen in the movie) accepted. Allred said they have received hundreds of thousands of email messages from people all over the nation, praising the movie. “We think we’ve made an important change,” said Allred, “so thank you very much, GLAAD, because you’re making an important change too.”

The Outstanding Electronic Advertising Award went to IKEA and its clever commercial, “Living Room,” featuring a nontraditional family of two gay men and their children on a couch.

Michelle Clunie of Queer As Folk, presented the Davidson/Valentini Award to fellow QAF actor, Robert Gant. The award - named after Craig Davidson, GLAAD’s first executive director, and his partner, Michael Valentini – is given to an openly LGBT media professional who has made a significant difference in promoting equal rights for the queer community. “My good friend and former litigator, Robert, returned to his true passion of acting,” Clunie said. “He was offered numerous roles on television and made his defining moment when Leah Thompson opened her door on Caroline in the City, to reveal her date. But his real defining moment came in 2001 when he courageously and fearlessly accepted the role of Ben Bruckner on Showtime’s Queer As Folk as the first-ever HIV-positive male character on TV with an active love life and sex life.”

She said when Gant came out openly in The Advocate magazine in 2002, he firmly established himself as an actor whose honesty matched his talent. Since QAF wrapped in 2005, he has continued acting while also moving behind the camera with the creation of Mythgarden Productions, which produced the gay-themed film, Save Me, a selection of the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. His philanthropic activity has garnered him major awards from agencies such as The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the Human Rights Campaign.

Gant said he was thrilled that in February 2004, as they were filming the same-sex marriage ceremony of Ben and Michael (the first such event ever on TV), it was the time of Mayor Gavin Newsom officiating same-sex marriages in San Francisco. He queried, “How does this happen? That some overweight gay kid with a painfully low self esteem from a blue collar family in Tampa, Florida ends up on a stage in San Francisco recognized for his efforts on behalf of the advancement of equal rights for the LGBT queer community.” He added, “I couldn’t know then - as that little boy – that I could be proud as I am now to be a gay man, to have the opportunity to find ways to be of service to my fellows, to stand with my brothers and sisters as we walk the path towards equality.” He concluded, “We live more openly, freely, and out loud than we ever have by far, and yet we’ve only begun.”