Comedian Wanda Sykes says her 2008
public declaration that she's gay shocked her.
Sykes, who came out gay in remarks
during a demonstration against California's gay marriage ban,
Proposition 8, said she had not consciously set out to publicly
acknowledge her sexual orientation.
“I kind of shocked myself,” she
said Thursday night on CNN's Piers Morgan Tonight. “I
was in the middle of it, and it was from anger.”
Sykes married her girlfriend Alex in
2008 before passage of Proposition 8. The next year, Alex gave birth
to the couple's twins Olivia Lou and Lucas Claude. Sykes was
previously married to record producer Dave Hall from 1991 to 1998.
The 47-year-old host of Fox's The
Wanda Sykes Show reiterated that she believed being gay was
harder than being Black in America.
“I believe that,” she told Morgan.
“I'm not talking about the history of African-Americans. I'm
talking about at this point right now.”
Sykes added that President Barack Obama
was doing a “great job.”
“The thing is, people don't realize
how screwed up the country was, you know?”
“He's a thinker. He's very
thoughtful, and we're not used to that. We're used to
fly-off-the-handle, crazy presidents. 'Let's just go blow stuff up,'
you know?”