ABOVE: If you wanna be a bottom banana ...

BELOW: Keep reading for the ex-NFLer who is marrying his man, the OUT100, the not-so-gay-friendly Dem challenging Pelosi from the right, the truth about Riverdale hottie Casey Cott and much, much more ...

ABOVE: Crazy transformation!

BELOW: Reclaiming femme, Huckabee Sanders shrugs at N-word allegations, amazing movie poster released, and more ...

(Images via The Cutting Room)

Monday night at The Cutting Room was the highly anticipated concert to benefit GLSEN staged by my pal Wayne Laako and featuring some of the cast of FX's just-renewed series Pose.

Thrown together quickly for a good cause, it was a total smash, a seamless event packed with fans and filled with great performances and affirmations.

Burnside knows how to hold a stage. (All event images by Matthew Rettenmund)

Dyllón Burnside, Ricky on the show, was the emcee and main performer, and let me tell you Pose-finale watchers: Al B. Sure is no longer the #1 panty-dropper on the scene. Cute and confident, he sang his heart out eand commanded the night with his personal coming-out story and by introducing his “father,” history-making Vibe co-founding EIC Emil Wilbekin. Together, they spoke about the importance of safe spaces for LGBTQ people. The concept of a safe space is often ridiculed, parodied to mean that those who seek it expect to live life in a cocoon. In reality, it's about allowing marginalized people a shot to live their lives, not free from stress and struggle and hard work and emotional ups and downs, but free from targeted abuse and intolerance and hate.

(Video still via The Birds and the B.S.)

Billy Porter guests on The Birds and the B.S., on which he reminds us not to make fun of Trump's appearance ...

Billy Porter is our very own EGOT-to-be (he's got the Tony and the Grammy), and now he has written a powerful piece for his hometown paper entitled “Why I Am Committed to Disturbing the Peace.”

In it, he writes, An artist's job is to disturb the peace.

Keep reading for more ...

(Video still via GLAAD)

Billy Porter, who was given the Vito Russo Award from GLAAD this weekend, made as rousing a speech as Debra Messing, calling on  gay people to get it together and go to war against discrimination.

He said we need to get our “war clothes” on, because:

... From slavery to emancipation to the 13th Amendment to Jim Crow to the Civil Rights Movement to Stonewall to AIDS to marriage equality, we gotta remember the shoulders who we stand on, the ones who fought and died for those freedoms that we hold so dear.

He went on to call himself a survivor of the AIDS crisis and a grateful beneficiary of the marriage-equality movement:

It's time to take this moment and acknowledge that the reailty of  life is that it's ever-involving, and until we can figure out how to love on another unconditionally, no one wins — NO ONE. Freedom, equality, justice, have always come at a cost, and evidently they always will.

Keep reading to see his whole speech, which was punctuated by a repurposed gospel song ...

Zarley & Porter (Images via Matt Zarley)

It's International Women's Day, and singer Matt Zarley is releasing his tribute to divas — The Estrogen Sessions.

Among the covers on the new album is this remake of Des'ree's “You Gotta Be,” which he sings with Tony winner Billy Porter.

Says Zarley, via press release:

Billy and I have wanted to record together for years and we wanted to do a song with a powerful message, a message that felt relevant, and we did not want to do a ballad. This was the perfect fit and it’s definitely one of my favorite songs on the album because I feel the 28 years of friendship between Billy and me in this song. I'm so thrilled that we have this moment forever.

Download Video as MP4

I had so much fun during my visit to Larry Flick's Sirius XM radio show today, during which he was counting down the top gay anthems ever as part of Proud & Loud:A Celebration of Gay Anthems. Spoiler alert: “I Will Survive” came out on top, and yet as we all know, those on the bottom are often just as interesting, if not more.

Ms. Wash, Ms. Moore and Ms. Porter—3 divas 3

Martha's 60, Melba's 68—don't they look good?

Anthony Wayne, Anastacia McCleskey & Jacqueline B. Arnold slaying their star-studded audience.

Case in point, the countdown also featured songs by The Weather Girls and Melba Moore, and both Martha Wash and Ms. Moore were in attendance. It was especially cool that Martha was there, because Larry had invited Anthony Wayne, Jacqueline B. Arnold and Anastacia McCleskey, the cast of Mighty Real: A Fabulous Sylvester Musical, to sing two of the late, great disco diva's best-ever tunes. Martha being one half of the original Weather Girls meant she'd be watching people acting out a sliver of her own personal history.