Text of Beals' speech at SF Pride

Text of Beals' speech at SF Pride

Say “hey” if your gay.

What a parade. That was sooo much fun. What a glorious gorgeous gay gathering. What a celebration of pride and liberation and diversity and love. No other city does it like you do it, San Francisco. With your architecture and hills and bridges and your spectacular mayor, who stands brazenly in the face of the most archaic administration in modern history. While so many politicians seem to be pushing the politics of hate, Mayor Newsom advocates for the politics of love. As I rode down Market Street I was surrounded by it. Love in every variety, every shape, every size every color, every race, every class, every orientation, every allegiance, was beautiful. This city is a city that revolves around love. Where multitudes have congregated explicitly because love is irrepressible. This is a parade that shouts out the power of love even in the faces of fools who would dare to suppress it. I am incredibly moved right now to be looking out into this vast sea of love and grateful and privilege to represent one small facet of it in my role on the L-Word.

You know sometime in 2002 in the spring I was taking a hike and I was thinking to myself, “Okay, what do I want to do next?” I thought I want to do a love story. I want to do a deep and profound, wonderful, full of obstacles, ultimately triumphant love story, and I made my wish and I kept walking and then a week later Showtime called me and asked me to join their new series portraying a woman loving another woman. I thought how fantastic. Leave it to the universe to give you back something that you wished for with so much more profundity and complexity and beauty than you could have ever possibly imagined, and I am truly truly grateful. For me this parade is a continuation of that walk that I took five years ago and today I make a wish that we take this parade and we keep it inside of ourselves. We take this pride and this love with us into tomorrow and the next day and the day after that. Love is and will always be, always more powerful than hate. Thank you San Francisco.