George Takei, most famous for playing Lt. Hikaru Sulu on "Star Trek," spoke about gay rights and the government shutdown at the National Press Club Friday. (Suhaimi Abdullah/Getty Images)

You know you are a big deal when your face is on a cookie!

Plenty of "Star Trek" fans attended a speech Friday at the National Press Club given by gay rights activist and actor George Takei, where dessert was cookies frosted to look like a rainbow gay pride flag, a Starfleet insignia and a picture of Takei's face promoting his book "Oh Myyy! There Goes the Internet."

Takei, most famous for playing Lt. Hikaru Sulu on "Star Trek," said he was pleased to visit the recently-reopened national monuments on Friday including the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial. Takei met King in the 1960s and said he felt moved by the monument's message of equality- right before he looked across the National Mall at the "national nuthouse," also known as the U.S. Capitol.

Takei called Congress, "a place where some whackos close down the government and drove hundreds of thousands of people out of work and then they turn around and say they are creating jobs. These whackos that disrupt the funerals for military personnel who died abroad and then they say they are doing that to strengthen our military. It's absolutely absurd."

Takei said the Capitol represents how Washington and the District of Columbia are two separate cities, and represents the co-existence of irrationality and idealism he's seen during his life. Takei was imprisoned in Japanese internment camps with his family during World War II, and came out publicly as a gay man in 2005, so during his speech he described a broad range of discrimination in America.

Takei married his long-time partner in 2008, with the late Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, as a guest at the ceremony. Since he was part of the advocacy against laws that limit LGBT rights including the Defense of Marriage Act and the "don't ask, don't tell" policy in the military. Takei advocated against laws in Russia that limit LBGT rights, but said protests should not include a U.S. boycott of the upcoming 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, because American athletes deserve to compete.

"Russia needs to punished," Takei said. "The International Olympics Committee is spineless. They need to have some backbone, because they are charged with promoting the Olympic creed."

Looking ahead Takei said he is optimistic in the young generation to solve LGBT rights discrimination and other divisions in America.

"I love young people," Takei said. "Especially young straight couples, because they will be having the gay babies of tomorrow. It is for them that we must be agents of change."