If last night’s 2019 Los Angeles GLSEN Respect Awards is any indication, native citizens of Alabama, perhaps the nation’s most socially and politically repressive state, have taken a major lead in the fight for LGBTQIA equality.

Some of the state’s most powerful notables and disruptors, student’s, Academy Award winners and the most successful Captain of industry in global business history, stood on stage at the Beverly-Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills and threw down the gauntlet.

Eliza Byard GLSEN’s Executive Director opened the event by reminding the megawatt celebrity gathering that the threats facing the LGBTQ community have intensified dramatically in just the short span of three years.

“Two weeks ago the Attorney General of the United States of America, William Barr, described LGBTQ rights as ground zero in the secular war on religion,” she said. “He pledged that the Department of Justice would be at the forefront of the fight against our efforts in schools.”

Similar threats are being waged throughout the highest levels of government by the Trump administration, Byard noted. “Secretary of Education, Betsy Devos, is shredding the policies and programs at the Department of Education that protected LGBTQ youth, youth of color, youth with disabilities and immigrant youth from discrimination and racism and violence in our schools.”

“Last year she (Devos) announced that the Department of Education would no longer investigate claims of anti-transgender discrimination and just last month she proposed to erase the Department’s data on civil right violations in our schools,” Byard said.

Devos, who is widely viewed as one of Donald Trump’s most favored cabinet members recently proclaimed the birth of “education freedom,” a phrase she used in a speech she gave, according to Byard, “to a voucher funded school that teaches that homosexuality is a sin.” The speech reaffirmed the administration’s determined and coordinated drive to elevate the right to discriminate over the rights of those discriminated against.

GLSEN National Student Council member Eric Semelo, who described himself as a “half-white, half-Filipino gay boy from Montgomery, Alabama,” was the first of GLSEN’s remarkable students to take the stage, showcasing a future community leadership that was as cerebral and stellar as it was diverse in every sense.

Semelo and Youtube star Connor Franta presented Riverdale the group’s Game Changer Award to its star Madeline Petsch and producer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa. “If our show Riverdale offers any of its views a sanctuary, a sense of hope— even if it’s only for one hour a week — nothing could make me happier or prouder,” Aguirre-Sacasa said.

Elle Smith, a high school senior at Cedar Ridge High School in Round Rock, Texas, was honored as the 2019 Student Advocate of the Year. She said her award was a “testament to the strength of my generation: when faced with opposition we are going to stand up, we are going to build movements and we are going to fight.”

Judith Light, the Tony and Emmy Award winning actress and LGBTQ activist who stars in Amazon Studio’s Transparent, praised GLSEN’s mission as vital, particularly in “a world that is so fraught with disruption and lies.” She introduced Jennifer Salke, Amazon Studio chief, herself a disruptor who has brought spearheaded a Hollywood revolution in content featuring the LGBTQ community.

Salke gave an impassioned, almost spiritual speech, that proclaimed the power of authenticity. “My team and I believe that everyone should feel authentically represented,” she said. “We believe that representation brings understanding, acceptance, inspiration and transformation.” Salke has notably formed teams for her projects that are comprised of individuals who reflect the storyline.

Salke also called out Elle Smith as someone with exceptional power and a very bright future, calling on other Hollywood power brokers to join her in supporting her future.

“It’s actually simple,” said Octavia Spencer, an Academy Award winning actress and native of Montgomery, Alabama. “Respect is treating someone as you would want to be treated,” she said. In her speech, accepting the Inspiration Award Spencer tearfully said allyship comes easily for her: “I know what it’s like to feel invisible, to be overlooked, to feel less than.”

Jeffrey Katzenberg, himself a major disruptor, now launching a movie platform called Quibi that is set to bring a whole new Hollywood experience to your phone, took to the stage to introduce one of the most influential human beings on earth, Apple Computer CEO Tim Cook.

Cook, a native Alabamian who is gay and who came out in 2014, reminded the audience that “what we learn and what we are told to value as children can define the course of our lives. If a teacher, a parent or an authority figure,” he said, “takes time to show kindness, to represent the great diversity of our humanity and create space for authentic conversation when we are young, it stays in our hearts forever.”

“Unfortunately, we see all too often the consequences of failing our kids. Trans and non-binary young people kicked out of their homes and attacked on our streets; bullying and harassment in our schools and a broader society that still sends the message that when the going gets tough, it’s the least among us who get targeted first.”

Cook, taking up the gauntlet, said “there is so much more we can do to change things.”

He dedicated his Champion Award to a 62 year old man who wrote him a letter that described the burden and collateral consequences of a life lived in shame. “The world is a better place when we have every opportunity to be ourselves.”

It was almost like a celebration of the famous 1984 Apple Computer commercial in which a woman athlete sprints forward with sledge-hammer in hand and throwing it into the face of power, ends it’s grip.

That commercial announced a new era and, presuming Cook takes his award to action, so did last night’s event.