Keke Palmer and Pamela Anderson were both honored for their commitment to LGBTQ+ activism during the Los Angeles LGBT Center Gala on Saturday, held at Century City’s Fairmont Century Plaza.
The two received the Vanguard Award alongside the late Leslie Jordan, a longtime center affiliate and former host of the gala, who was posthumously given a self-titled award.
Typically held annually, the fundraiser returned following a four-year-long absence as a result of the pandemic. The fete, hosted by Ts Madison, raised $1.2 million to go toward senior and youth services, culture and culinary programs and mental health resources.
The center holds the status as the largest nonprofit serving queer and trans communities internationally.
“For me, it’s about freedom,” Palmer said of the center’s mission. “At the core, we are all trying to tell the world to let us be ourselves. Love me as I am, let me live as I am.”
“I’ve always been my own person. Sexuality and identity for me has always been confusion. You know, it’s, ‘I never felt straight enough. I never felt gay enough. And I never felt woman enough. I never felt man enough.”
Palmer said
“You know, I always felt like I was a little bit of everything.”
She shared how she has always been “met with disdain” for leading with her “masculinity”.
“So much of that came from who I thought I had to be to get respect, admiration and love,” she continued, trying to emulate her “father” in order to not be “diminished” because she was a woman.
“That’s always been a source of pain and resentment,” she admitted.
She concluded on an emotional note, asking: “Why did my gender have to define the power I have in the world? And why does my gender get to decide my sexuality?
Keke Palmer, who recently celebrated the birth of her first child with her partner Darius Jackson, has previously opened up about her sexuality being somewhere “in the middle of the scale”. “I feel like love is love, life is life. Do you thing, live you life. I feel that way,” she said.
