Racialicious Crush Of The Week: George Takei

Takei self-identifies as a gay man; he told his Star Trek castmates and hinted that the only person who had a problem with it was William Shatner. In 2005, Takei stated his gay self-identity in a more public forum: in a interview with Frontiers, a magazine aimed at California’s queer communities, he revealed that and that he and his partner, Brad Altman, have been in a committed relationship for nearly two decades. And he has done some amazing lead-by-example social activism, from doing PSAs calling out ex-NBA player Tim Hardaway, Arkansas school district vice president Clint McCance, and the Tennessee state legislature on their homophobia and doing “Equality Trek,” a 2006 speaking tour on his experiences as a gay Japanese-American man, to serving as the Human Rights Campaign’s  ”Coming Out Project” spokesperson. (Source) Takei and Altman married in 2008–with Nichelle Nichols as the matron of honor–two months before Proposition 8 declared cisgay marriages unconstitutional. (Takei’s and Altman’s marriage stayed legal according to the initial ruling.) This is what he said about the ruling’s passage in a overturned the initiative. And Takei himself been given praise for his social-justice work: he received accolades for his public handling of homophobia and given the LGBT Humanist Award in 2012 by the American Humanist Association.

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