Sam Smith Caused Controversy at the Oscars When He Claimed He Was the First Openly Gay Star to Win an Oscar

Sam Smith and his co-writer Jimmy Napes won the Oscar for Best Original Song, for ‘Writing’s on the Wall’, from the movie ‘Spectre’.

Sam dedicated the award to the LGBT community, because he read somewhere that no openly gay man had ever won an Oscar. (That was actually incorrect. Other openly gay performers have won, including Melissa Etheridge, Elton John, and Stephen Sondheim for Best Original Song in other years.)

Acclaimed screenwriter Dustin Lance Black has hit back at the singer on Twitter following the incident, reminding Sam that he’d won an Academy Award himself for Best Original Screenplay in 2009 for Milk.

The openly-gay star also took the opportunity to publicly blast Sam for ‘texting’ his fiancé Olympic diver Tom Daley

Hey @SamSmithWorld, if you have no idea who I am, it may be time to stop texting my fiancé. Here’s a start: https://t.co/8hGTRtIaMK

— Dustin Lance Black (@DLanceBlack) February 29, 2016