Joy Behar is a vocal ally of the LGBTQ+ community and has always championed their rights the best way she could. “I identify with the fact that gay people, once they are ‘out,’ have to deal with that — they want to be honest, and yet people are out to get them,” she said in an interview with Gay City News.
She is also a staunch proponent of gay marriage and admitted that the struggles queer people face were what eventually pushed her to tie the knot with Steve Janowitz. “One of my in-laws had a partner who was very ill and dying in the hospital. And my in-law was not allowed to make decisions for her partner because they were not legally married. And I thought, “I don’t want that,'” she recalled, adding that it was “ridiculous” and she didn’t want the same thing to happen to her and Janowitz years down the line. “That was one of the main reasons I wanted to get married.”
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And when gay marriage was legalized in New York in 2011, they finally took the plunge. “It did have an influence on me,” she said in an episode of “The View” that same year (via Digital Spy). “It brought to my consciousness why gays needed to get married. And I thought it was a good reason for me to get married. And so did Steve, so we did it.”
