Film star, stand-up comic and Atlanta talk-show host Mo’Nique says she doesn't know why the Human Rights Campaign wants to give her the Ally for Equality Award on Saturday.
“I think that’s a question for them,” she said in a recent interview.
But filmmaker Lee Daniels, whose “Precious” led to a sweep of supporting actress awards for Mo’Nique in 2009, gets it. “She understands our plight and our movement better than any actor that I know or any celebrity I know,” said Daniels, in a conference call.
“The only other person that is as gay friendly as Mo’Nique is Madonna -- that really jumps in for gay rights in a way that is not superficial, that comes from the heart.”
Such an attitude makes Mo’Nique an ideal guest at the 24th annual gala dinner and auction of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest civil rights organization for lesbian, gay and transgendered people.
Close to 1,000 members of the organization, including Daniels, and guests, including Mo'Nique, will gather Saturday for the fund-raiser at the Marriott Marquis in downtown Atlanta.
The Ally Award "is given to allies outside the LGBT community who stand up on behalf of equality for all Americans,” according to the organization.
Mo’Nique, 43, was born Monica Imes in Woodlawn, Maryland. She came to national attention playing the role of Nikki in the UPN sitcom “The Parkers," but her career took off after 2009’s “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire,” for which she won the Academy Award.
While in that post-Oscar spotlight she frequently spoke up for gay and lesbian rights. It is an attitude that grew out of ugliness in her own family, she said. An uncle who was a homosexual, died of AIDS, and her family turned away from him, she said. “He was treated as if he was a monster. My uncle died a sad person.”
About whether the African-American community is harder on gay people, Mo’Nique said discrimination -- and acceptance -- happen in every ethnic group. “You have people who are black, white, Latino, Chinese, who look at homosexuality as a bad thing, and you have people of all those same races who say ‘Please leave people alone. Let them be who they are going to be.’ "
Among her accomplishments, Mo'Nique considers her Atlanta-based talk show, "The Mo'Nique Show," now in its second season, the prize of the bunch. "It took me years to get to what the vision was in the beginning, and that vision was having a talk show," she said.
An admirer of Oprah Winfrey, she said "the biggest thing I learned from Oprah Winfrey is that it is possible. That’s it. And if it’s possible, lets go get it."
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