MILK

Went to see Milk. The movie about the life of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man elected to office in the U.S. It's a wonderful movie, that shows the human part of Milk, who was assassinated by a co-worker who alleged in his defense he had 'too much junk food'. The 'twinkie defense', was called later. He ended up convicted of manslaughter and did five years in prison, only to be released and later die at his own hand. Poetic justice? Maybe. You also get to see how Milk (a New York transplant) made San Francisco his home and how he began fighting for gay rights in the seventies.

So the film, besides showing us a glimpse of who Milk was, his relationship with the -possibly closeted and wingnut- Dan White, his lovers and his friends, also shows us the political -and moral- landscape of the U.S. around 1979. And guess what? Nothing has changed much. The same rhetoric is being brandished (gays are immoral, gays recruit children, gays are sinners, the gay 'lifestyle' will be the end of the U.S. and the family as we know it, blah, blah, blah.) Anita Bryant stands for Sarah Palin and John Brigs stands for all the other right winger neocons in government today. It's the same old lies told by the same idiotic liars and listened by the same idiotic listeners. Same old, same old.

But hopefully some people will wake up. After the passing of Proposition 8 gay and lesbians (and straight people) have realized their rights are not that inalienable. Anybody is in danger of losing right at the hands of the theocrats that feel their duty and right to fight anybody who does not think like them. So maybe some people will wake up and will take it to their blogs, to the streets, to their houses and make a statement: LGBT folk deserve the same rights and responsibilities of anybody else, and there should be separation of religion and state in matters concerning these rights. No to a theocracy. Yes to freedom.

Note: if the movie has not gotten to a theater close to you, read a little of The Major of Castro Street by Randy Shilts