Rob and Michele Singer Reiner were remembered Saturday night during this year’s Human Rights Campaign gala dinner in Los Angeles.

Kelley Robinson, president of the LGBTQ+ civil rights organization, recognized the late couple’s work in the fight to legalize same-sex marriage. “When Prop 8 passed in 2008, Rob and Michele stood shoulder-to-shoulder with a real-life league of queer Avengers,” Robinson said. “I’m talking about Chad Griffin and Christina Schocky, Kris Perry and Sandy Stier, Jeff Zarrillo and Paul Katami, Justin Mikita and Adam Umhoefer, who’s here tonight.

“And from that moment when they locked arms, they decided to launch the American Foundation for Equal Rights and that legal team took the fight all the way to the Supreme Court and won for our rights and for our lives,” she continued. “Rob and Michele were and are superheroes. They showed us what real allyship is. They were courage embodied and most importantly, they never stopped giving a damn – not for themselves or for self-image but for the good of all of us.”

Rob and Michele were found stabbed to death in their Brentwood home on Dec. 14. Their son Nick Reiner was arrested and charged with two counts of first-degree murder in their deaths. He pleaded not guilty on Feb. 23, and is being held without bail. He is facing two counts of murder with an enhancement that could carry the death penalty or life without parole if he is convicted.

At the start of the HRC program, gala chairman Todd Hawkins dedicated the night to the Reiners. “They helped make it possible for LGBTQ+ people to marry the person they love,” he said, adding, “I remember looking out from this very stage last year. Rob and Michele were right there cheering us on with everything that they had. We may have lost them in the physical sense, but we have never lost their spirit, their fire, their fight, their energy, their friendship, their influence and their everlasting impact. So tonight, we dedicate this evening to them. We remember them, we honor them.”

Lisa Kudrow and RuPaul presented writer, director and producer Michael Patrick King with the Visibility Award.

The television impresario, a mastermind behind “Sex and the City,” “And Just Like That,” “The Comeback,” and “2 Broke Girls,” among many other projects, talked about not coming out as gay until he was 36. “To be clear I was never confused who I was. I knew who I was from a very young age,” King said.

He described a photo of him taken when he was three years old. “This toddler, me, is looking straight into the camera wearing my mother’s sheer summer curtains wrapped around me as a gown…and one with a veil over my head,” King said. “And I am holding a bouquet of plastic flowers that I took from the vase on the top of the TV…On the back of this photo in my mother’s handwriting, it says, ‘Michael being the bride. 3 years old. Favorite outfit.’ And yeah, my mother was shocked when I told her I was gay 33 years later.”

King wondered aloud why it took him as long as it did for him to come out. “Every single thing I learned about how society hated gay people, maybe,” he said. “And even in a family as filled with as much love as mine, the societal shame got in and told me not to be vocal, not to be meek. All those years, I was letting society hold me back from becoming who I was meant to be.”

See photos from the Human Rights Campaign gala below.