Jun 05, 2009  |  By: Amy Cavanaugh  | COMMENTS     

She may be best known for playing lawyer Miranda Hobbes on “Sex and the City,” but actress Cynthia Nixon is quickly becoming known for another role — LGBT rights activist.

Nixon is coming to town this weekend to receive an Out for Equality Award at Equality Maryland’s eighth annual Night Out for Equality event, to be held at the Marriott Bethesda North Hotel and Conference Center.

In an interview with the Blade, Nixon, who doesn’t use the term “lesbian,” and said that “if I have to pick, I would say gay woman, but I would prefer not to pick anything at all,” called being recognized by Equality Maryland “a lovely honor.”

“I feel like there are so many people all around the country who are really doing great grassroots organization in trying to get marriage equality in all the different states,” she says. “I feel like on the one hand this movement has come very fast and in a very short space of time, but in some places it’s not there yet.”

She added that “there are places like Maryland that I think will take a little time, but every year we meet people and talk to them about who we are and what we want and what we’re being denied. I think that’s the way you change people’s minds and hearts.”

On May 17, Nixon spoke at the Action = Marriage Equality Rally NYC about the financial benefits of same-sex marriage, and also addressed those who say same-sex marriage harms “traditional marriage.”

“How will my girlfriend and I getting married have any effect on you and your wife, or you and your husband sitting at home?” she said at the rally, adding that “the right to marry is about us, it is not about you, any more than the fight for integration was about white people, or a woman’s right to vote was about men. It is only about you to the extent that you have to live with yourself knowing that you are depriving a significant portion of the population their basic civil rights.”

At the same rally, Nixon announced her engagement to girlfriend Christine Marinoni, and she’s hopeful the couple, who became engaged in mid-April, can marry in New York.

“It would just be a wonderful celebration and a wonderful promise to each other that we want to spend our lives together,” Nixon told the Blade. “But on a more fundamental and practical level, right now she is a stay-at-home mom for our kids, but she has no legal relationship to them. If we married she would have a legal relationship. But until DOMA is repealed we wouldn’t be looking at things that straight married people have, like if I should die right now the inheritance taxes she would pay would be exorbitant, and she may have to sell our apartment.”

Nixon, who campaigned for President Obama because she “thought he was great on issues,” is hopeful that DOMA and “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” will be repealed in the very near future.

“I thought [Obama] was very strong on LGBT stuff, but he has yet to come forward on that so far,” she says, adding that she “remains hopeful.”

Nixon says that she doesn’t think Hollywood has treated her any differently after coming out, and has called the media coverage of her relationship “pretty damn good.”

Nixon just finished performing on Broadway in “Distracted,” a play about a woman whose child might have attention deficit disorder, which ran for five months. She’s gearing up to start shooting the sequel to the “Sex and the City” movie. Shooting begins in mid-August, and Nixon couldn’t reveal any other details, but said that the film has an expected release date of June 2010.