For Alan Cumming, life has never really been just a cabaret, old chum.

Winning a Tony Award and being nominated for an Emmy would be enough to boost the résumé of any star, but the 47-year-old Cumming — who currently plays Eli Gold on CBS’s “The Good Wife” — has always sought to parlay his showbiz success into humanitarian endeavors, particularly those aimed at lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) causes. His March 18 debut at New York’s XL Nightclub was no exception: proceeds from that evening’s performance benefited the International Gay Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC).

Though Cumming was in top form throughout the night, belting out stellar renditions of showstoppers from “Mack Mabel” and “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” alongside a gender-bending take on “Mein Herr” from his signature “Cabaret,” it became clear that politics were never far from the outspoken actor’s mind. Of his recent visit to Kansas City (which he described as “a place where there aren’t going to be any gay marriages for a long time”), Cumming quipped, “To try and make the Missouri part [of the city] seem better, people were saying, ‘At the GOP caucuses last week, that side — Kansas — voted for Santorum, but we voted for Romney.’ Like that was a good thing!” Introducing one number as a song he first performed at the 2008 wedding of two gay friends in California in the weeks before Prop 8, he exclaimed, “If you are a pro-gay Mormon, go to your church and tell them to stop being so sh*tty!” (Cumming himself tied the knot with graphic artist Grant Schaffer at New York’s Soho House in January, five years to the day of their civil partnership in London).

After concluding his show with an encore mashup of Adele’s “Someone Like You,” Lady Gaga’s “The Edge of Glory,” and Katy Perry’s “Firework,” Cumming spoke

This article originally appeared on: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/18/alan-cumming-xl-nightclub-performance-gay-rights_n_1360097.html