I love Queen Latifah but I hate when magazines pose a woman on a magazine cover with her mouth in some sort of weird, uncomfortable open-mouthed smile. Look at her! She’s not laughing, she’s actually posing like that. What a terrible thing to do to our queen. Anyway, Queen Latifah covers Uptown – probably because she’s promoting her HBO movie, Bessie – and she ends up talking around her sexuality but coming out for marriage equality and LGBTQ tolerance. Some highlights:

She supports marriage equality: “People’s ideas in general are antiquated when it comes to who you love. We haven’t moved as quickly as we probably should. And the reality is that there’s always been gay people in the black community, so it’s not foreign to us. And not just as a black community but just a society as a whole…Who you choose to marry is really up to you and it’s not something you should be judged on. I don’t find being gay or lesbian to be a character flaw. Couples should be protected under the laws of this country period. It actually angers me.”

Her thoughts on Bill Cosby: “It’s unfortunate because he has done so much in terms of entertainment, culture and black folks. But right is right and wrong is wrong. All these women, all these stories, it’s just—what a big stain on such an amazing career.”

The cancelation of her talk show: “Obviously it was disappointing but I don’t look at these things as catastrophic failures. We have a lot going on in our company alone, so I’m not worried about my next job opportunity.”

[From E! News]

I like she specifically calls out the African-American community when it comes to LGBTQ acceptance. For what it’s worth, it has gotten a lot better overall, across races, in the past few years. I’m saying that as someone who remembers the 2004 election and the GOP strategy of getting black preachers agitated about gay marriage to the exclusion of everything else. I don’t think that could happen again, and I’m happy about that. As for Latifah’s sexuality…we knew she was gay when she brought girlfriend Jeannette Jenkins on a yacht vacation in 2010! Just FYI: I think Jeannette and Latifah called it quits in 2011, and Latifah is with a woman named Eboni now.

As for the Bill Cosby stuff… I think it’s difficult for a certain generation of black entertainers to discuss the Cosby stuff, because Cosby was truly an idol to so many of them. Yes, all of the rape is a “big stain” and I wish she had used strongly language about it, but hey… at least she didn’t defend him.

Photos courtesy of WENN, cover courtesy of Uptown.