Night of a thousand gay icons

Last night was Equity Foundation's annual benefit auction, held at the Portland Center Stage Gerding Theater. Equity is a fantastic Portland-based foundation that awards grants to nonprofit organizations statewide that are effecting social change, particularly around queer activism. We're honored to be among the organizations chosen for 2008: Equity will be sponsoring the Bitch In page for our upcoming Loud issue (Summer 2008).

It was fancy! And gay! Check out the archetypal gay icon herself hovering over an impressive lighting technique.

The space was beautiful, the turnout was great, lots of items were up for bid – like the awesomely-titled "Tootsie Role" (an autographed photo of Dustin Hoffman in one of his greatest performances) – and gay icons in both cardboard and real form were all about.

Here's a photo of Reba (one of these days, I'll improve my photography skills; in the meantime, let's pretend blurry is artsy).

And please forgive the self-indulgance, but I couldn't resist getting all up close to cardboard Liberace. Long before I knew what gay was, he dazzled me.