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Wanda Sykes (briefly) calls in gay to “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno”

Last night on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Wanda Sykes made her first appearance on the show since publicly coming out as gay and married in November. After Leno announced her name, she took her sweet time coming to the stage. Once there, she explained that she was “calling in gay” and giving Leno and the audience “a little taste of what it would be like if I didn’t show up.”

This was a nod to December 10 being International Human Rights Day and “Day Without A Gay,” in which LGBT people were encouraged to stay home from work and donate their time to gay rights service instead.

Clad in a t-shirt bearing a rainbow-colored fist, Sykes joked with Leno about her impromptu public coming out at a Prop 8 rally in Las Vegas (“so much for ‘what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas!'”) and thanked him for always being “supportive and respectful” of her sexuality. They also talked about the ridiculousness of the idea that “gay rights” are “special rights.”

You can likely find the episode posted in its entirety tomorrow on hulu.com’s Tonight Show page, but, for now, watch a clip from the show below:  

As funny as her appearance was, the clip above ends on a low-note as far as I’m concerned. Wanda’s comment about how Prop 8 was based on the paranoid notion that gay marriages could affect heterosexual marriages devolved into a tired bit by the gay-friendly Leno about how lesbian sex is titillating for men.

When he blathered, “You lesbians, go to straight guys’ houses, make love on their floor. They will vote for this amendment!” I wanted to say to my TV, “Oh Jay. I know you’re trying to help. But that’s the problem. Too many straight guys did ‘vote for this amendment’. ‘Yes on 8’ meant no to gay marriage, remember?”

And that’s the other problem – the vote was over a month ago.

There’s no way for any of those straight guys (or anyone else) to vote for gay people in California now anyway, regardless of Sykes’s charm and hilarity or Leno’s eagerness to have Sykes as a guest and give her a platform to talk about gay issues.

After the break, the conversation moved away from gay rights to national politics. Sykes raved about how great it will be to have some “action” in the White House between the President and the First Lady (adding, “we finally got a First Lady with a nice ass!”) and how US automakers need to stop making gas-guzzlers. And the PT Cruiser.

What did you think of Sykes’s very gay appearance on The Tonight Show?

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