Fox News entertainment reporters have a really bad habit of asking utter B-list and C-list celebrities awkward questions about politics and sensitive cultural issues. Remember that Angie “I’m not a racist just because I hate Obama” Harmon debacle? That started because of Fox News – my guess is that there was some Fox reporter egging Angie Harmon on. Granted, Angie Harmon is a big girl, and she was probably just looking for a fight.
I bring up the Angie Harmon stuff because something similar has happened when Cybill Shepherd and a Fox News report‘s eyes met across the crowded Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center’s “An Evening With Women” event. Full disclosure: I’m a second-generation fan of Cybill (my mother loves her) and even though I know in my heart Cybill’s totally crazy, I kind of like it. Anyway, since this all took place at a Gay & Lesbian Center, the conversation was headed in an obvious direction. When asked about gay marriage and the passage of Prop 8 in California, Cybill laid the entirety of the Prop 8 blame at the feet of “the Mormons and the Catholics”.
After that, Cybill started talking about the evolution she’s seen in civil rights, from Memphis in the 1960s to Los Angeles in the new millennium. She’s quite eloquent in that part of the interview, and I totally know where she’s coming from. But then she has to go off on what religion she practices, “Christian Pagan Buddhist Goddess worshiper”. Of course. Who isn’t? Cybill also calls herself a “feminist” and says that “I really think that probably God is a woman, that helped me to break through that celestial glass ceiling.” A celestial glass what now?
Tennessee-born beauty Cybill Shepherd definitely isn’t one to waste words — and had she no qualms in speaking out about who she thought was to blame for the passing of Proposition 8 in California’s last election, which led to gay and lesbian marriage rights being overturned.
“The Mormons and Catholics,” she told Tarts at the recent L.A Gay & Lesbian Center’s “An Evening With Women” celebration in Beverly Hills. “Most of the money came from Utah, it’s very unfortunate.”
However Shepherd does feel that President Obama is doing enough for the cause.
“I think he is working hard at it, I really do. I am just so encouraged by Iowa and Vermont. We have a tough road ahead in California, but we’ll be hittin’ within a year,” she added with confidence.
The 59-year-old’s passion to pursue the fight for Gay & Lesbian rights actually stemmed from Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1968.
“He was killed in my hometown of Memphis, three and a half miles from my high school and I’m a product of the segregated south and I got to see that hatred up close, live that hatred, colored only, whites only, and when he was killed I was stricken with guilt and shame,” Shepherd added.
“I felt as though I hadn’t done enough to help the civil rights cause and as I gradually began to understand, what is the most recent excuse to deny people rights under the law? To treat them as less than human and once you get that kind of right thinking you realize how important it is to stand up for the gay and lesbian kids who are at greater risk because they don’t have community support and sometimes their parents kick them out. Particularly in L.A we have more runaways then anywhere in the world.”
So when it comes to Shepherd’s own faith, she’s developed quite the hybrid of religious convictions.
“I’m a Christian Pagan Buddhist Goddess worshiper, but I’m also a feminist. I think the ultimate glass ceiling is God, in another words, if we think God is a man, then we make man a God, and I studied and learned that there is a whole other history of the worshiping of the great mother,” she explained. “I really think that probably God is a woman, that helped me to break through that celestial glass ceiling.”
[From Fox News]
I actually don’t really have a problem with any of that, to each her own. Many of us probably have elements of Paganism and Goddess worship in our haphazard faith, whether we know it or not, so no judgment. I suppose my problem with what Cybill is saying is that I know how some people will take it. They’ll look at her and think “whatever, typical whack-job Hollywood”, when Cybill actually had interesting things to say about growing up in Memphis and seeing the civil rights movement up close. Oh, well.
Cybill Shepherd is shown with her daughter, Clementine Ford, at an event for the LA Gay and Lesbian center on 4/24/09. Credit: FayesVision/WENN.com
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