At the 30th Annual GLAAD Media Awards Saturday night, Andy Cohen was presented with the Vito Russo Award for his activism and role as an openly LGBTQ media professional who has helped further LGBTQ acceptance.

During his acceptance speech, Cohen, 50, spoke about his own experience navigating his identity in the LGBTQ community and becoming a father to his son, Benjamin Allen.

“To be gay today is something I am so thankful for,” the late night talk show host said in his acceptance speech after being introduced by BFF Sarah Jessica Parker. “But the fight is not over, and it’s a fight that I’m committed to—even more so now that I’m a father.”

Cohen welcomed his now 3-month-old son via surrogate on Feb. 4, 2019.

Want all the latest pregnancy and birth announcements, plus celebrity mom blogs? Click here to get those and more in the PEOPLE Babies newsletter.

“I never thought it could happen,” Cohen said about starting his own family. “When Benjamin was born three months ago, I looked into his eyes and I saw that there was no hate, no bias, no bigotry — just love.”

The star added: “That’s how we come into this world and that is how hopefully one day we will all live in it.”

The Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen host recalled when he first came out to his family, telling the audience and viewers that his mother told him she needed to mourn the loss of her son ever having a family of his own.

“What a gift that I spent today with my parents and my son,” Cohen said.

In February, the father of one opened up to PEOPLE about his son’s arrival, recalling the birth and seeing baby Benjamin for the first time.

“He was so alert for the first two hours. His eyes were wide open. He didn’t cry; he was just calm,” Cohen said. “I kind of have no words for it.”

Cohen may not have become a first-time parent until a little later in life than most, but the advantage of that, he said was that he has “a sense of calm that I didn’t have 10 [or] 20 years ago.”

The new dad added, “I think I will be [a] strict [dad], but I have a sense of what to get hysterical about and what to let slide. I don’t want to be a helicopter dad. I don’t want to stress him out. I don’t want to stress myself out.”

Source: Read Full Article