Queen Latifah insists she was not
signaling that she's gay when she performed at Long Beach Gay Pride
last month.
“That's definitely wasn't the case,”
she told Entertainment
Weekly. “I've never dealt with the question of my personal
life in public. It's just not gonna happen.”
Latifah's
May 19 performance included her telling the mostly gay crowd that
she was happy to be in the presence of “her people” and “I've
been waiting to do this for a long time.”
“To me, doing a Gay Pride show is one
of the most fun things,” she added. “My first show that paid
more than $10,000 was in a gay club on New Year's Eve in San
Francisco. Tupac happened to be in town, so he came to kick it with
me. This was the early '90s. And the boys were like, 'Take your
shirt off, Tupac!' He wasn't doing that. But we had a blast in
there.”
The 42-year-old singer-actress added:
“I know that the most important thing and the only thing I have to
give is love. When people are going through hatred and bullying, the
biggest thing to fight that is love. So that's all I encouraged my
audience to do that night: to share their light and share their love.
Period.”