MILK

I watched MILK last night and it was not easy to watch. As a movie and a biopic it left something to be desired, but as an experience it was an emotional roller coaster.

This is a history that isn't taught in schools, and it's one I've felt far removed from. But it struck me while watching the real-life news footage of the police raids on gay bars, of gays being rounded up and arrested, that those events led directly to my being able to sit here on my couch and watch this movie with my husband, in a relationship legally indistinguishable under Massachusetts law from that of a straight couple. Those men wore handcuffs; I wear a wedding ring.


That is inspiring, but the movie was also frustrating. As far as we've come, it's amazing how little we've learned. And how history repeats. The big crusade in the movie is against Prop 6, the passage of which would've made it legal for employers to fire people based on their sexual orientation. The gay establishment at that time, such as it was, wanted to wage a tip-toeing campaign to sneak the issue past voters, based on the belief that straight voters would never support gay rights. Milk insisted on the opposite, on gays being out and in the open; his theory was that "if they know us, they won't vote against us." It worked overwhelmingly.

Thirty years later, with Milk's winning strategy clearly known but without Milk to push it, a closety campaign was waged against Prop 8 based on vague notions of "equality" and "the right thing to do" and a total reluctance to show the people and families Prop 8 would hurt most. Even to the point where an amazingly pro-gay letter to the campaign from then Democratic nominee Barack Obama was not used in ads or flyers apparently because it used the word gay too much. Milk's lessons were ignored, and as a result, we lost.

At the end of the movie when Harvey gets shot -- first through the palm as he tries to block the bullet, then through his chest, and finally through the back of his head -- it filled me with a sense of loss and anger for what might have been accomplished under his leadership. Thirty years have gone by and the gay rights movement has been unable to turn out another Harvey Milk. Instead we have organizations like the Human Rights Campaign that still can't bring itself to put the word gay in its name. It seems to me we should be paying a little more attention to the original Milk.

I think it's important for the gay community never to underestimate how much some people hate us, and the tremendous amount of effort and money they'll expend to keep us down. But it's even more important to remember how many more people are willing to welcome us, if we only present them with the opportunity.