Watch Oprah Powerfully Stand Up for Gay Rights in This 1997 Clip

To celebrate allies during Pride Month, we’d like to share a throwback of a 1997 The Oprah Winfrey Show clip of Oprah supporting gay rights. In the video, Oprah defends her decision to interview Ellen DeGeneres, who at the time had made the historic decision to publicly come out as gay.

The clip is taken from an episode where audience members challenged Oprah for interviewing DeGeneres. Then, it was a controversial move, but years later, DeGeneres’s bravery has gone down as a much-celebrated historical moment in pop culture.

In the two-minute video of the segment (below), a female audience member passionately questions Oprah’s decision to give DeGeneres a platform.

Oprah: What do you think?

Audience Member #1: I think that it’s great that someone like Oprah, who is successful, has to pave the way for acceptance in the community. I mean, if this is what we have to do to break down barriers, then let's do it.

Oprah: What do you think?

Audience Member #2: I've seen it in the Bible, it clearly states that homosexuality is wrong, and I feel that you are a powerful woman, and you have done so much, and if you are going to represent yourself as a Christian and then you're gonna go on the show and say that you also support that, it's a double [standard].

Oprah: Well, I have a different view of Christian than you do, okay. The God I serve doesn't care whether you're tall or short or whether you were born Black or Asian or gay. So that's just a difference of belief and I don't expect to change your belief today, because just before I came down here—I'm late today 'cause I was in the makeup room arguing with somebody who was telling me how all gay people are going to hell, and now I'm going to hell with all the other gay people for doing the show.

Oprah: I take full responsibility for my going to hell or heaven. I take full responsibility, and I feel that everybody who's concerned about me now going to hell 'cause I'm doing Ellen Degeneres show, I think that you all should take that energy and try to create a little heaven here on earth for everybody. And I take full responsibility for it, I take full responsibility for it. See, I believe God created Ellen. I believe God did that. Ellen says she's gay. I believe God created her gay. I believe God did that.

Audience Member #2: You can't stand up there on that show and in front of this whole American society and say that you support that.

Oprah: I support her right to be who she thinks she is.

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