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11 Surprise LGBTQ Moments From the 2018 Oscars

Heather Hogan —
Mar 5, 2018

Change was in the air at the 90th Academy Awards last night. While most of the winners were still white men, there were some notable victories for queer people and people of color; the stage was stacked with POC presenters; and trans women were represented better than ever. The show also featured three commercials starring a variety of queer folks. It was actually quite a surprise! It seemed like nothing was going to be queer this year; we didn’t even liveblog! So let’s count ’em down: here are the top 11 LGBTQ moments from the 2018 Oscars. (In no particular order.)

Twitter’s #HereWeAre ad was narrated by queer spoken word poet Denice Frohman.

https://twitter.com/Twitter/status/970384028422496256

The Dee Rees-directed Wal-Mart commercial starred a lesbian couple helping their daughter dream big.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNmzeFjo0eQ

This Samsung Galaxy ad starred Dee Rees, Rachel Morrison, and non-binary actor Olabisi Kovabel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxGtPsA6C9k&feature=youtu.be

Lesbian Academy Award winner Debra Chasnoff was featured in the In Memoriam. She passed away last year at the age of 60 after a battle with breast cancer. Mombian notes that Chanoff was the first openly gay person to thank her partner when winning an Oscar, for her documentary Deadly Deception: General Electric, Nuclear Weapons and Our Environment, in 1992.

Coco won Best Animated Feature and both the producer, Darla K. Anderson, and the co-director, Adrian Molina, are gay! And they thanked their spouses while championing diversity in film.

https://youtu.be/cClLL7f3H8k?t=1m25s

A Fantastic Woman won Best Foreign Language Film. It tells the story of a trans woman dealing with the grief of losing someone she loves and the oppression she faces as she tries to move on, and it stars trans actress Daniela Vega. Vega also became the first openly trans presenter in Oscars history last night.

Vega introduced Sufjan Stevens, whose performance of Call Me By Your Name‘s “Mystery of Love” had a surprise St. Vincent.

Call Me By Your Name, the gay coming-of-age story set in Italy in the ’80s, won Best Adapted Screenplay, making gay screenwriter James Ivory the oldest Oscar winner in history, at he age of 89!

https://twitter.com/TrevellAnderson/status/970436916104413184

Common and Andra Day shared the stage with ten activists during their performance of “Stand Up for Something.” Among them: Janet Mock!

The diversity in film package featured Dee Rees, Daniela Vega, and Yance Ford, the first trans person to ever be nominated for Best Director.

Jodie Foster and Jennifer Lawrence presented the Best Leading Actress award to Frances McDormand. That award is usually presented by the winner of Best Leading Actor from the previous year, but in 2017 that was Casey Affleck, and #MeToo/Time’s Up forced him to stay home.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94yKLV8k2aE

What were some of your favorite Oscars moments this year?

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