"Moonlight" is the first LGBTQ film to win the Oscar for best picture, a fact that GLAAD President Sarah Kate Ellis pointed out on social media Sunday night in congratulating the movie on its achievement.
"This sends a strong message to the film industry that it needs to embrace inclusive stories if it wants to remain competitive and relevant," Ellis said.
In his acceptance speech, "Moonlight" writer Tarell Alvin McCraney dedicated his adapted screenplay Oscar win _ he shared it with director Barry Jenkins _ "to all those black and brown boys and girls and non-gender-conforming who don't see themselves" in film.
Continuing the theme of inclusivity, supporting actor winner Mahershala Ali became the first Muslim to win an Academy Award for acting.
GLAAD also provided the blue ampersand pins seen on the lapels of McCraney and others on the "Moonlight" team and in the audience.
In his October 2016 review of "Moonlight," Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan wrote, "Its story of aching loneliness, sexual longing and the despair of blasted lives, the emphasis it puts on the great difficulty and the equally powerful necessity of intimate human connection, the way it persuasively insists on the shared humanity of marginalized communities, makes it feel like a film we've been waiting for for a very long time."
