The sacred and the profane alighted at the Human Rights Campaign dinner on Saturday.
Kevin Smith
Ribald and unscripted, Kevin Smith, creator of “Clerks,” “Chasing Amy” and “Red State,” rambled raucously from the stage at the Four Seasons Hotel.
A frequent Austin visitor, the straight gay ally thumped the hirsute girth under his hockey jersey: “I’m the king of the bears!”
Using language that didn’t amuse all the guests at the fundraiser for the equal rights group, Smith talked at length about his older brother, Donald, who waited a long time to come out to his younger brother.
Realizing that his and his friends’ ugly remarks contributed to this reluctance — and knowing that his brother saw few reflections of his romantic life on the screen — Smith has since always included gay material in his movies.
He won the group’s Equality Award. The Corporate Equality Award went to AT&T, which has received a 100 percent equal workplace rating from the HRC for the past nine years in a row.
Gala chairwomen Kathrin Kersten and Heather Beckel Luecke also introduced HRC’s national president, Chad Griffin, who peppered his speech with references to President Barack Obama’s second inaugural address, to recent electoral wins and to the upcoming U.S. Supreme Court rulings on the Defense of Marriage Act and California’s Proposition 8, which struck down marriage equality in that state.
Dave Steakley
Later, the Visibility Award was conferred on Austin’s own Dave Steakley. Since 1991, the artistic director of Zach Theatre has produced 30 gay-themed plays, including “Angels in America,” “The Laramie Project,” “Love, Valour, Compassion” and “Take Me Out.”
Early on, the theater company suffered some defections from longtime subscribers uncomfortable with the gay material or occasional appearance of stage nudity.
Yet Steakley, his board, staff and collaborators stuck to their guns. On this and on other subjects related to Austin’s evolving ethos, Steakley has been a highly visible and often thoughtful leader.
“I was raised by my grandparents on a Texas ranch,” he said at the HRC dinner. “And my grandmother would stand at the kitchen sink and sing old Baptist church hymns while she was washing dishes. ‘How Great Thou Art’ was her very favorite hymn and she would sing it with the full outpouring of her heart, and as a kid I would ponder endlessly over that phrase in the song ‘…then sings my soul…’ I always wondered what that lyric meant. … How could a soul sing?
Liz and Jamie Baskin
“Well, I now know exactly what that phrase means because I have had the rare privilege to experience it so many times over the years at Zach,” he continued. “This has been an unbelievable year of ‘soul singing’ for me, and creating the Topfer Theatre along with Zach’s board, patrons, staff and artists is the most meaningful experience of my life thus far.”
He concluded with a speech extracted from “Angels in America”: “The world only spins forward. We will be citizens. The time has come. Bye now. You are fabulous creatures, each and every one. And I bless you: More life. The Great Work Begins.”
Of course there was money to raise at the dinner. The Federal Club pledge that night took in more than $200,000 alone, thanks in part to the eloquence of Jamie and Liz Baskin, whose daughter is gay and who demonstrably upped their commitment to this upper bracket club of givers.
A near disaster just a few years ago, the HRC dinner is back to being among the most essential benefits in town.