Just attended a talk by Dustin Lance Black

Right to left, Richard Socarides of Equality Matters, Dustin Lance Black, and Aubrey Sarvis of SLDN.

Kerry Eleveld of Equality Matters preparing for her interview of Black.

Dustin Lance Black is quite the interesting guy. He won the Academy Award a few years ago for the screenplay of "Milk," and gave a really nice acceptance speech about marriage equality - he also co-produced "Big Love" for a number of years. Kerry Eleveld of Equality Matters was interviewing him about gay politics, in which he's been quite involved, including serving as a board member of AFER, the new-ish organization that's in charge of the Prop 8 lawsuit. And he knows quite a bit about politics. He's actually quite a smart, interesting guy, and kept the crowd interested, and laughing, at the (gay) Diner tonight in Washington, DC, where Equality Matters was hosting an interview with him.

Richard Socarides, who runs Equality Matters, and has blogged on our site before (most famously about the infamous DOMA brief) took me up to meet Lance before the talk, and I was quite impressed. Yes, he's absolutely adorable in person (looks and personality), so let's just get that out of the way to start with. He also has quite a head on his shoulders. I was seriously impressed by the breadth of his knowledge of the issues, but also the way he handled the questions from Kerry and the audience (quite well), and the answers he gave, which were usually quite interesting even if a question was just average. It's always interesting to me, as an east coaster/midwesterner to see a "Hollywood type," as we call them, who really knows his politics, and has a brain to boot.

I have a number of videos I took with my iPhone of his answers to a number of the questions, and once I edit them (they seriously need to be lightened), I'll post them, probably tomorrow at this point. In the meantime, you can see the raw video on our twitter feed, where I tweeted bits and pieces during the talk (again, it's not great video, it's iPhone video under bad lighting).

Right to left, Richard Socarides of Equality Matters, Dustin Lance Black, and Aubrey Sarvis of SLDN.

Kerry Eleveld of Equality Matters preparing for her interview of Black.

Dustin Lance Black is quite the interesting guy. He won the Academy Award a few years ago for the screenplay of "Milk," and gave a really nice acceptance speech about marriage equality - he also co-produced "Big Love" for a number of years. Kerry Eleveld of Equality Matters was interviewing him about gay politics, in which he's been quite involved, including serving as a board member of AFER, the new-ish organization that's in charge of the Prop 8 lawsuit. And he knows quite a bit about politics. He's actually quite a smart, interesting guy, and kept the crowd interested, and laughing, at the (gay) Diner tonight in Washington, DC, where Equality Matters was hosting an interview with him.

Richard Socarides, who runs Equality Matters, and has blogged on our site before (most famously about the infamous DOMA brief) took me up to meet Lance before the talk, and I was quite impressed. Yes, he's absolutely adorable in person (looks and personality), so let's just get that out of the way to start with. He also has quite a head on his shoulders. I was seriously impressed by the breadth of his knowledge of the issues, but also the way he handled the questions from Kerry and the audience (quite well), and the answers he gave, which were usually quite interesting even if a question was just average. It's always interesting to me, as an east coaster/midwesterner to see a "Hollywood type," as we call them, who really knows his politics, and has a brain to boot.

I have a number of videos I took with my iPhone of his answers to a number of the questions, and once I edit them (they seriously need to be lightened), I'll post them, probably tomorrow at this point. In the meantime, you can see the raw video on our twitter feed, where I tweeted bits and pieces during the talk (again, it's not great video, it's iPhone video under bad lighting).