Saturday in San Francisco with George

I was at the Human Rights Campaign's annual awards dinner and gala in San Francisco Saturday night, where George Takei received HRC's Equality Award, Elizabeth Edwards gave the keynote address, and the always-gorgeous Lucy Lawless gave us three wardrobe changes and a whole lotta love for her gay fans. And I’m here to tell you it's official: Mr. Sulu loves him some Xena.

“Isn’t she fabulous?” he said of Lawless, who swished over in a low cut black gown. “I’ve never met her before.”

At the reception before the awards dinner, I told Takei I’d been a huge fan of the original Star Trek series, but had always felt excluded from the show’s Utopian vision, where queers like me – and him – were invisible.

“Well, Star Trek had as its core value what we call IDIC, Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations,” he said. “And (Trek producer and creator) Gene Roddenberry always told us the diversity of the Starship Enterprise was where its strength was. There’s a diversity that we can see: the color of one’s skin, or the shape of one’s eyes. There’s the accent of a person, diversity we can hear. But there’s another diversity that we can’t see oftentimes, but that too is a part of the strength of America.”

Even when he was talking about television, drama, and popular culture, Takei steered a course directly toward the political heart of each issue. He told me it was his political beliefs that led him to make the scathingly humorous faux-PSA about Tim Hardaway’s homophobic comments, and it was his life as a child growing up in an internment camp that led him to those political beliefs.

“It was one of the most egregious violations of the United States Constitution, and too few Americans know about that,” he said as we waited to go into the dinner. “We have a great constitution, but as my father used to say, our system of government has both the strength and the weakness worked into it because it’s a genuine people’s government and we’re as great as the people can be, and we’re as fallible as people can be ... So, I’ve always been involved in the process, because I appreciate the strength of our democratic system, but I’m very mindful of how fragile it is.”

On accepting the award, Takei said, “The love of same sex couples, their commitment to each other through thick and thin, is as true and as authentic as any two people who love each other. I would not be here tonight were it not for the support, the constancy, of the 20 year partnership of my partner Brad Altman.” Takei smiled at Altman, who was sitting in the audience, and added, “He's shy; he doesn't like the public eye.”

I’d seen Takei chatting with San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, and I mentioned to him that the mayor and I had actually bonded for a couple of minutes earlier in the evening over being native San Franciscans. Takei, whose father was born here as well, praised Newsom in his acceptance speech, saying, “It's great to be here in San Francisco where your mayor, Gavin Newsom, for a brief shining moment in history made gay marriage a reality.”

That decision was later overturned by a state court, and all the marriages invalidated. Takei told me that injustice, and others like it across the country, are why he’s fighting so hard for LGBT equality. “There are laws that are laws with barbs in them,” he said, “that prevent other citizens from having equal rights with other Americans, simply because of the gender of the person they happen to love. So this is again, boldly going where America has never gone before.”