Wanda Sykes Comes Out Amid. Passing of Prop. 8

More than 1,000 protestors turned up in Las Vegas Saturday for the city’s Join the Impact demonstration for LGBT equality, but one speaker at the Sin City rally took the crowd by surprise -- comedian Wanda Sykes, who chose the occasion to tell the crowd that she is gay.

The 44-year-old star of CBS' The New Adventures of Old Christine told the crowd how excited she was to see Barack Obama elected president, but was “crushed” to see the passage of California’s Prop. 8, which banned civil same-sex marriage in the state.

“We took a huge leap forward and then got dragged 12 feet back,” Friess reported Sykes as saying. “I felt like I was being attacked, personally attacked, our community was attacked. I got married October 25. I don’t really talk about my sexual orientation, I felt like I was living my life, I wasn’t in the closet, but I was just living my life. Everybody who knows me personally, they know I’m gay. And that’s the way people should be able to live our lives, really. We shouldn’t have to be standing out here demanding something we automatically should have as citizens of this country.”

Sykes said Prop. 8 supporters “pissed off the wrong group of people. They have galvanized a community. We are so together now and we all want the same thing and we shouldn’t have to settle for less. Instead of having gay marriage in California, no, we’re gonna have gay marriage across the country. When my wife and I leave California, I want to have my marriage also recognized in Nevada, in Arizona, all the way to New York. I’m proud to be a woman, I’m proud to be a black woman and I’m proud to be gay."