André De Shields receiving the Legendary Visibility Award at the 2026 HRC National Dinner. Photo courtesy of Michael Key.
Each year, the Human Rights Campaign packs the Washington Hilton in Northwest D.C. in hopes of raising funds to continue the fight for LGBTQ rights in the United States.
This year’s blue-and-gold gala, which honored LGBTQ trailblazers and allies who have committed themselves to standing up for LGBTQ people, took place on Sept. 26, bringing together people from government, film, art, theater and much. This year’s theme: Let’s Get Free!
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer gave the keynote address, while other celebrities, including Marcia Gay Harden, Junior LaBeija and André De Shields, were honored for their work in LGBTQ history and activism.
The night began on the “blue carpet,” where guests arriving at the hotel in their very best black-tie attire — although with more flair and finesse than at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which took place in the same hotel months before (more drag queens and updos) — started with drinks and one of D.C.’s hottest DJs, Sweet Spot’s Christopher Uhl, playing some of the biggest queer — and queer co-opted — hits of the year.
As Kim Petras, the Spice Girls, and Slayyyter played during the welcome reception, guests mingled while waiting in growing lines for cocktails before being let into the International Ballroom. They took pictures on the carpet and started to vie for a chance at the silent auction, which had furniture, appliances, trips and much more donated to push forward advances in equality through electoral mobilization, policy advocacy and cultural change.
A slew of people from all spheres of life — from artists like Kehinde Wiley, up-and-coming stars on Capitol Hill like Congressman Everton Blair Jr., to local D.C. notables like Kimberley Bush of the DC LGBTQ+ Community Center and Dito Sevilla, one of the owners of LGP — made the evening feel like exactly the kind of gathering Jack McFarland from “Will & Grace” would describe as, “Every A-list gay will be there, you know, the creme de la creme of the creme de la femme.”
Kelley Robinson, HRC’s president, delivered a powerful speech highlighting the struggles queer ancestors of all creeds, skin colors, and histories have overcome in the country while pushing the message of the fight yet to come — particularly with the midterms less than 40 days away.
Robinson framed the moment as both historic and urgent.
“None of them really knew they were changing the world, and yet tonight, HRC, I want us to be clear: we are sitting in the history-making moment, this is our moment. This is our time. This is a time where we got to say out loud the truths that we hold to be self-evident: that immigrants belong here, that black lives still matter, that love is still done, that trans women are women, and every trans child deserves protection and joy and love and freedom.”
She also laid out the stakes of the current fight in stark terms.
“Today, people are dying of complications from AIDS. Today, they are kicking trans people out of the military. Today, there are laws in place to lock up doctors who care for trans patients who provide abortion care. The truth is that for the first time in a generation, we are fighting for our rights with the full weight and force of the United States government working against us. We have a Supreme Court that’s hell-bent on rolling back our rights. We are one decision away, one decision from the resurrection of anti-sodomy laws, from legalized discrimination at work from losing marriage equality.”
Robinson then turned to marriage equality, making clear that she viewed the fight over LGBTQ rights as personal as well as political.
“I want to be very clear about this. I do not play about my wife. I said till death do us part, not till J.D. Vance does us part, y’all. If they’re coming for my marriage, if they’re coming for your marriage– they’re gonna have to go through me and everybody else in this ballroom. We are wrapping our rights in steel, and we are doing it now, good people.”
With the midterms approaching, Robinson tied the night’s fundraising and organizing directly to the election ahead, calling for those who stand with gay rights to stand with transgender rights– as they are the same fight.
“This election is going to decide our future. We cannot– we bet not– sit this one out…If you are running for office, you cannot be anti-trans and pro-equal. You cannot be anti-trans and pro-equality. No, every fall it’s the same thing.”
She ended by calling on those in the room to give everything they could to the movement.
“This, my friends, is our do-or-die moment. So I’m asking you, not to do what you can, but to do all that you can. To give your time, give your money, give your heart. And I want to leave you with this: When they marched across that bridge in Selma, they had no reason to believe that they would ever achieve civil rights, and yet they marched. When AIDS activists were burying their own, they had no reason to believe that survival was possible, and yet they fought.”
Her speech finished with cheers, clacking fans and maroon napkins being whipped above heads in a circle.
After the LGBTQ policymakers, advocates, and supporters finished eating, keynote speaker Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer took the stage.
There was a noticeably softer tone from Gov. Whitmer — a mom speech in the best possible way, one that felt like both a hug and some uplifting, encouraging words about the battle to come.
Whitmer began with a direct commitment to LGBTQ people.
“As a friend, an ally, and fellow citizen, I will always, always have your back. You deserve to love who you love, no matter what. You deserve to be who you are, no matter what. You deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, just like every other human being, no matter what. I see you. I stand with you, and I will always fight like hell for you, no matter what.”
She then pointed to her record as governor of Michigan and the work accomplished under a Democratic trifecta.
“With the first Democratic trifecta in a generation, we put our foot on the gas and delivered on those fundamental freedoms. We banned the so-called panic defense in Michigan courtrooms. We created the first statewide LGBTQ+ commission. We secured life-changing grants for LGBTQ+ entrepreneurs and businesses. And it was around this time when all this work came closer to home for me.”
Whitmer also connected that work to her experience as a mother, recounting the signing of the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act.
“As a parent, there’s nothing I won’t do to protect my kids, and as a governor, there’s nothing I won’t do to protect yours. And that’s why, with my daughter standing next to me, I signed the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act into law to reaffirm and expand legal protections for every Michigander. And now, no Michigander can be fired from a job or kicked out of their home because of who they are, who they love, or how they identify. It was one of the best days of my life.”
But Whitmer also acknowledged that the fight for LGBTQ rights is far from over.
“HRC, I know that progress can feel slow and painful, that the attacks are mounting, that the finish line keeps getting moved further back. But here’s the thing: you’re not in the wilderness. You know exactly what to do in moments like this, and you don’t have to look very far for inspiration. It’s here in this room. This has been one of the most successful movements, certainly in my lifetime, and in American history.”
She ended with another reminder that the fight would continue at the ballot box.
“There will always be hard fights to come, but I think and I hope the hardest part is over—the part where you had to struggle silently and alone. Because right now you are in this room, you are sitting at these tables, and you are saying together, ‘This is who we are.’ And if your voice, if your courage, your locked arms weren’t enough, you have something else this year– You have your vote.”
Following the governor’s speech, HRC began its live auction, where hotel stays and inclusive vacations that cost a truly eye-popping amount ultimately allowed the organization to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars during this fundraising portion of the night. The room eventually raised an additional half a million dollars a few minutes later, egged on by comedian and Out 100 honoree Dana Goldberg.
Then came the awards.
Marcia Gay Harden was the first to be honored. Before she stepped out, clips from her decades of film work — from “First Wives Club” to “Margot’s Got Money Troubles” — were shown at the gala.
Her speech centered on love — particularly the fact that her three children are all queer — amid the less-than-kind place the world can be for LGBTQ people. She also gave a shoutout to her first boyfriend, whom she shared eventually came out and died of AIDS. She received the Ally for Equality Award.
Harden used her speech to make clear that being an ally requires more than simply expressing support.
“But acceptance is only the beginning, because allyship is not a pose; it’s a practice. And I’ve discovered that it’s not enough to love someone privately while allowing the world to make them feel unsafe publicly. And I think I first learned that lesson a long time ago. I come from a military family where life could sometimes feel very black and white. My mother was a Dallas lady who beautified everything that she touched, and my father was a gruff, cigar-chomping man whose favorite expression was ‘goddamn son of a bitch,’” eventually sharing how her father would grow to accept her gay then-ex boyfriend.
She emphasized that LGBTQ people do not need to prove their worth to deserve protection and belonging.
“No one in this community needs to accomplish anything to enter the room of deserving. You have that right simply by being, and that to me is what allyship asks of us now: show up, speak up, vote, vote, vote, organize, give. Thank you for giving tonight, and open your door. And when freedom, safety, or humanity is under attack, we don’t get to look away simply because that attack is not aimed at us.”
And as the night shifted from celebration back toward the work ahead, Harden offered a simple message to the people carrying the movement forward.
“So to every activist, every organizer, educator, filmmaker, advocate, parent, and friend, and especially every young person who’s carried this movement forward when it was exhausting, frightening, or lonely. Thank you. I accept it with so much gratitude and so much love for you and so much love for the gay community, and I just want you to know that. So tonight we get to celebrate that, but tomorrow we show up. We show up with basic human rights.”
An incredible performance of “Memories” by acclaimed American actress, singer and ballroom icon Chasity Moore had tears welling in the eyes of gala-goers as lights twinkled on the ceiling while musical director and pianist William Waldron accompanied her on piano.
Then came one of the creators of LGBTQ culture as we know it.
Junior LaBeija stepped onto the stage, beginning with his iconic line from “Paris Is Burning”: “Opulence! You own everything.”
LaBeija received one of the night’s two HRC’s Legendary Visibility Awards, and used his speech to reflect on freedom, fear and the generations of LGBTQ people who came before him.
“I was just telling the wonderful artist sitting next to me that when I was young, and another male took off all his clothes and laid with me, and I felt his heart beat, the patting of his breath caught up in the rapture, the freedom that he did not have fear that anyone’s going to come through a locked door and do him harm. I want that same freedom for my trans sisters, my trans men, my trans kids.”
He also spoke about the fear that can accompany simply living openly as an LGBTQ person.
“But I’m at a point in my life now where I want to live, but I don’t want to live here. I’m gonna say for emphasis. I want to live, but I don’t want to live here because when I would get up, even coming from upstairs, from my room, there’s one thought that I never thought about, but I think about it every day. I never thought that I could lock my door to where I live, and maybe never come back that day because someone doesn’t like who I am or what I am or who I represent.”
He invoked the LGBTQ figures and tragedies that helped shape the movement he inherited, becoming, if not a tagline of why he deserved to be in the room, but also worthy of the honor he received by the organization.
“I’m gonna tell you why I’m here. Because I met Marsha P. Johnson. I met Sylvia Rivera. I went to Quentin Crisp Memorial on Union Square. I went to the memorial for Matthew Shepard. I walked the pier when it was food and maritime summer school as a student.”
Lastly, and most grippingly, André De Shields was also given HRC’s Legendary Visibility Award and gave a speech that so beautifully encouraged the community to keep fighting — and to do so because, if no one else believes, Mr. De Shields does in those fighting for LGBTQ rights.
De Shields used his speech to reflect on LGBTQ visibility and the refusal to remain on the margins of society.
“As we say to the world, we are no longer to be hidden to the margins of society, because we are the generation, we are the people, we are the culture who knows exactly what to do with this miasma that’s staring us in our face.”
He then spoke about evolution, transition, and the future of gender.
“We may be born as a boy. We may be born as a girl, but we must be able to transcend. We must be able to transition. We must be able to metamorphose, depending upon what life demands of us. And now that we are concluding the first quarter of the 21st century, life is saying, ‘Save me.’ The Earth, Mother Earth, is saying, ‘Save me.’ The four elements are saying, ‘Save me,’ and they’re saying that to the only people who have experienced enough change, enough transcendence, enough transition to know exactly what to do.”
And he closed with a message about the movement’s future and the need to believe in what comes next.
“We are not who we were yesterday. We have yet to become who we’re going to be tomorrow. So we must stand ready. All the words have been said tonight. I would like to add my sentiment. Once I was raised, I was petrified. But if you believe within your heart, you. That no one can change the path that you must go. Believe what you feel and know you’re right because the time will come around when you say it’s yours.”
The night ended with a joyful tribute to Dolly Parton, as RuPaul Drag Race alum Nina West donned a wig that would make Parton proud as the ballroom began to dance with her to the late great country icon’s medley of hits.
The National LGBT Media Association represents 13 legacy publications in major markets across the country with a collective readership of more than 400K in print and more than 1 million + online. Learn more here: NationalLGBTMediaAssociation.com.
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