David Hyde Pierce is Gay, Married ... and Marching Against Prop. 8

As Dr. Niles Crane on the hit sitcom Frasier, David Hyde Pierce had a great deadpan. That also extended to his own life: For years he wouldn’t confirm or deny being gay. Since then he thawed enough to thanked his longtime partner, Brian Hargrove, in his 2007 Tony Award acceptance speech.

And on Saturday, Pierce was one baseball-capped protester among maybe 20,000 others marching for equality in Los Angeles. He was still deadpan -- dead serious. But in five minutes he told me more than he’s ever said in his stellar career.

As we talked, I noticed Pierce was wearing a wedding ring. I asked, and he confirmed: “Yeah, we got married three weeks ago.”

Advocate.com:David, why are you here now? For a long time you’ve chosen to be circumspect about -- I remember you saying,  “My life is an open book, I just don’t choose to read it.” Why now?
David Hyde Pierce: For one thing, I said that 15 years ago, so life has changed a lot in 15 years. But this is not about being gay. This is about having the basic right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and having that put up for a vote, not only here in California but across the country, and that is just fundamentally not what this country is about. And I completely understand the passions on both sides of this issue, but like I said, those rights are not negotiable no matter whether people like it or not. We’re not trying to force anything on anyone. We’re trying to go about our lives and live them the best that we can. So that’s why I’m here, and that’s why all these people are here.

Do you foresee now that more celebrities will become involved in speaking out against Prop. 8, now that it’s passed?
I have no idea what celebrities will do. I think the real issue for me is that this should never have been something that people voted on. This is not a country where people get to vote on people’s private lives, where people vote on whether we get to pursue life, liberty, and happiness. That’s part of the fundamental right of being an American. And so that, to me, is the miscarriage of justice -- not the way the vote went. I’m proud that at least in California it was close. There are other states where it wasn’t close at all, and they even took away the right to adoption. To me, the issue is, this should not be an issue divided by voters.

When friends ask you to separate or distinguish between religion and civil law on this issue -- it seems to be a point of confusion for so many people --what do you tell them?
A: Religion and civil law are already separated in this country. And I actually don’t think it’s so much an issue of separation of church and state; I think it’s a separation of emotion and fear, and passions getting stirred, from reality. The reality is, this whole marriage thing doesn’t affect anyone but the people getting married. And people have been led to believe and the passion’s been stirred up that it’s going to affect their children and it’s almost as they think, if gay people can get married, then the whole country has to turn gay. It’s craziness, and it doesn’t deal with the simple reality. The reality of the vote, what people were really voting on here, was, do you believe that the people of California should have a right to vote on who you choose to marry, whether you’re straight or gay. That was the vote. And miraculously, the people of California voted yes, we think everybody should get a vote in our marriage. They can’t have meant that. They can’t have really understood what they were voting for and voted for that, because it doesn’t make any sense.