It's been well established that gay men love Xena, but now we know: Xena loves you back.

At Saturday night's Human Rights Campaign awards gala in San Francisco, I told Lucy Lawless she had a lot of fans on her our website, and her face lit up. "Really? That's wonderful," she said. "I’m always counting on the women, but I love beautiful men. I love doing things with beautiful men, so I say bring it on. And bring your friends."

Lucy swept into the media reception before the dinner wearing a low-cut black evening gown, changed into a shiny catsuit, and then appeared on stage in a sparkling golden gown that would have been perfect on Rita Hayworth in Gilda. She posed for photos with keynote speaker Elizabeth Edwards, HRC Equality Award recipient George Takei, and HRC president Joe Solmonese, before providing a little self-described "comic relief" and serving as the world's most glamorous auctioneer at the fundraising event.

On stage, she cajoled one bidder into forking over $5000 for a luxury cruise ("His name is Brian, he's with AT&T, he's single, and he's at table 6") and even offered to sit on laps to get the bidding up before the final gavel dropped on a five-figure gourmet catered dinner for 14.

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.”

The San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival will launch its fourth decade on Thursday, June 14, with the North American Premiere of The Witnesses (Les Témoins), the latest film from director André Téchiné (Wild Reeds, 1994).

From Frameline:

Paris, 1984. In a cruisey city park, Adrien, a sophisticated, middle-aged doctor, meets Manu, a buoyant 18-year-old. Manu turns down Adrien’s proposition—then asks him to hold his jacket while he joins an orgy in the bushes. Not the best way to start a relationship, yet Adrien takes Manu under his wing. Manu needs guidance, and Adrien comes alive as he tromps around Paris with this energetic newcomer. Adrien’s friend Sarah worries that he’s being taken advantage of, but Adrien disagrees: “You can ask anything of your friends.”