Congrats! Being the First Matters! Winning Awards as One of the "First" as a Person in the LGBTQIA+ Community

 It is an amazing feat, being "the first" in most categories of life for honorable and good events or experiences of life. We celebrate the first woman pastor in our various denominations, as well as the first person of color or first person who is of the LGBTQIA+ community who is elected a bishop in various church denominations. We shout "huzzah" when people of color are now on US currency, and the first to be an astronaut and fly into space.We are still waiting for our first Black woman to take her seat on the Supreme Court of the US, along with celebrating the first woman as US President. These are all moments in which stereotypes and "this is the way we've always done it" has been broken, the glass ceiling cracked and busted open, and diversity and multiple experiences from non-traditional backgrounds are given a chance to shine and shake the status quo up, for the good of us all.

For example, the importance of "first-ness" as I'll call it in this blog was, remembered this last week with the death of actor Sidney Poitier on Jan. 6, 2022, at the age of 94 years-old. He was an actor, a film director, and an ambassador. In 1964, he was the first Black man in the US, and first Bahamian, to win the Academy Award for Best Actor for "Lillies of the Field" (1963), along with winning the Golden Globe Award and British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), along with a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album.  A notable first, which was part of the tribute mentioned and wrote about in his death last week. By "cracking" this "glass ceiling," Poitier made it possible for others to follow in his footstep and example. And the normative community of usually upper-middle class, male dominated, white, cisgender, non-disabled, heterosexual, Anglo-Saxon Protestants, which usually give these awards, is less bias and prejudice, and open to not only presenting awards to others who are not part of their mainstream, but open to making the "Others" as part of the voting community for such awards.

A case in point of a recent "breaking the glass ceiling" recipient was Michaela Jae Rodriguez, who, on Sunday, Jan. 9, 2022, won a Golden Globe for best actress in a TV drama. She is the first transgender actor to eve win a Golden Globe. She portrays the housemother and nurse Blanca Evangelista on FX television's series, Pose, which premiered in 2018 and ended in 2021.

On her Instagram account, she wrote: “This is the door that is going to open the door for many more young talented individuals. They will see that it is more than possible,” Rodriguez wrote. “They will see that a young Black Latina girl from Newark New Jersey who had a dream, to change the minds others would WITH LOVE. LOVE WINS. To my young LGBTQAI babies WE ARE HERE the door is now open now reach the stars!”

Another crack in the proverbial ceiling of new opportunities has come about in the last week. A new door is open that was previously closed, allowing more talented, young, LGBTQIA+ individuals and Black people, and people of color. There are more windows, ceilings, doors, ladders, and portals that still need to be opened. But door by door, ceiling by ceiling, change is happening for the better, people are able to reach for the moon and stars, making this a better, healthier, society, for one and all. 




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