Oprah Winfrey has opened up about her younger brother Jeffrey who died of AIDS 35 years ago.
While accepting the Vanguard Award from the non-profit LGBTQ advocacy organization, GLAAD, she spoke on his legacy and the challenges he faced about his sexuality.
“Many people don’t know this, but 35 years ago, my brother Jeffrey Lee passed away when he was just 29 years old, from AIDS,” Winfrey began. “Growing up at the time we did, in the community that we did, we didn’t have the language to understand or to speak about sexuality and gender in the way that we do now. And at the time, I really didn’t know how deeply my brother internalized the shame that he felt about being gay. I wish he could have lived to visit these liberated times and to be here with me tonight.”
She further added that hoped her brother would be alive today to see a world that would have been more accepting of his sexuality.
“I wish my brother Jeffrey could have experienced a world that could see him for who he was and appreciate him for what he brought to this world,” she added.
During her address, she highlighted The Oprah Winfrey Show, her televised talk series that aired from 1986 to 2011, for its efforts during the AIDS crisis to rectify “widespread misinformation and unfounded fear” concerning gay men. In 1987, she took her talk show to Williamson, West Virginia — a community that had closed a local pool after the discovery of an HIV-positive individual swimming there — to host a town hall meeting where medical professionals elucidated the transmission of the virus.
“We brought the facts and tried to erase some of the biases,” Winfrey said in her speech. “And then we went back, 23 years later, to revisit it and help people to confront their beliefs around homosexuality, and saw both the personal growth and the lack of personal growth that had taken place.”
In 1988, her show marked National Coming Out Day, coinciding with the inaugural year of the observance, by facilitating individuals publicly coming out to their parents on air. However, she candidly acknowledged that she insisted all participants come out to their parents prior to the show airing, jesting, “Really, I don’t want your mom to come after me.”
“I wanted to create a safe space to bring the lives and the background stories of the LGBTQ community front and center to our audience,” she said. “And what I’ve learned over the years of interviewing over 35,000 people one-on-one… is that every single person wants the same thing, and that is the desire to feel seen and to know that what we say matters and to know that we matter.”
The GLAAD Vanguard Award is presented to a prominent figure in the entertainment industry who does not identify as LGBT but has played a pivotal role in advancing equal rights for the LGBT community.
