Last night at the Los Angeles LGBT Center’s 46th annual Vanguard Awards gala, Miley Cyrus joined musician Linda Perry on stage – possibly to perform the song “Hands of Love,” which Perry wrote and Cyrus sang for the Freeheld soundtrack, but sources are unclear – and while she was up there, Miley licked the piano that Perry was auctioning off to benefit the center. Yes, she licked a piano.
Apparently Miley’s saliva is worth a lot, because the piano – donated by Orange is The New Black star Ruby Rose – sold for $50,000. All of the money was donated to the center, which works to help homeless LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, and more) youth.
Later that night, Miley was presented with the Vanguard award by staff of the center as well as members of her Happy Hippie foundation, whose website can be found here.
Miley’s speech can be found here. In it, the star says, “I want all of you to know that I feel beyond grateful to be in a room full of so many people who care so much about others because unfortunately that is way too rare in the world that we live in today. I’m thinking of tonight not as celebrating what we’ve already done but what we’re doing and what we’re going to do in the future.”
Cyrus presented some hard facts about LGBTQ+ youth. Two in five homeless American youth identify as LGBTQ+. That figures up to over 640,000 homeless LGBTQ+ youth in our country. “And in just Hollywood where we are all sitting, royally with all of our food in front of us and all of these fancy ass clothes,” Cyrus said, “something didn’t really feel quite right about it when we’re in a city where there are more than 6,100 homeless people under the age of 24 on the streets on any given day and more than one in four of these people have experienced hate crimes due to their race, sexual orientation or their gender identity.”
Miley is just one of many stars who have supported this cause. While I’m sure licking a piano isn’t a common thing for them, there is something they all have in common – supporting our nation’s troubled youth. We can only dream that one day, we’ll make it to having no homeless youth, one piano lick at a time.