badgerdaveo's Blog

What Changes in 30 Years?
- Posted on 11.09.08
Last Tuesday was bittersweet for me as a gay man living in California. On the one hand, we'd elected our nation's first black President, who, in his victory speech mentioned gay people by name in his vision for America. On the other hand, Proposition 8, the ban on gay marriage in California, passed with a solid majority, becoming the first time in American history when a law adding discrimination and REMOVING rights from a minority group has ever been written into a constitutional document. So yeah, it kind of sucked for us.

But then a crazy thing happened. People started taking to the streets. Like, every night. Thousands of us in major cities up and down the state took to the streets to protest. What specifically we were protesting was, at times a little unclear (although court cases are already in motion to overturn it), but what it HAS accomplished are two things. One, it let the people of California (and thanks to the media coverage it's attracted, the entire nation) know that LGBT people and straight allies in California are not going to take this lying down. Second, it's provided a forum for channeling the anger in a way that we've failed to do as a community in recent times. In...recent times that is.

For in the midst of all this protesting I was doing last week...marching around West Hollywood and Silverlake, I had the chance to see a press screening of the forthcoming Focus Features film MILK, directed by Gus Van Sant (a personal hero of mine as a filmmaker) and starring Sean Penn (I mean, come on. Do I even need to go into how awesome Sean Penn is?). The story, in case you're not familiar, follows Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man elected to public office in the US (when he became a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977). It's important to note that he was preceeded in election by Kathy Kozachenko and Elaine Noble, but stands out because of his impact on the LGBT rights movement.

During Milk's short term of office before being assassinated by fellow Supervisor Dan White, he was instrumental in overturning Proposition 6. Prop 6 sought to remove gay teachers and sympathizers from schools. Leading up to the vote, LGBT people took to the streets in the Castro district of San Francisco, marching against Anita Bryant's campaign to suppress gay people across the country.

While watching the film, I was struck by how Milk's work over 30 years ago is echoed in today's battle over Prop 8. I was also struck by two things that disturbed me. First, that today we lack clear and visible leaders in the movement. Aside from straight ally San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome, few people have been putting themselves and their reputations on the line to bring about change. The second thing stands out in a scene in which Harvey is talking with a group of well-established and wealthy gay leaders about a flier they plan to send to homes in the state. They're proud of the fact that they've managed to make Prop 6 into a "human rights issue" meant to "dodge the 'gay bullet'" Harvey calls this "a coward's response to a dangerous threat," and goes on to play a major role in winning the defeat of Prop 6 by OWNING the fact that it was about gay people, and by encouraging LGBT people all over the state to come out.

It troubles me to realize that in all of the TV and radio ads opposing Prop 8 in this election, the word "gay" was only mentioned once...by a straight woman. No LGBT person was ever represented, as though we needed to be kept in hiding in order to pass the thing. Voters aren't stupid. They knew Prop 8 was about gay marriage, and we DID need to educate them about the human rights issues at play. But perhaps this time around, we can take a lesson from thirty years ago, and be open about the fact that gay couples and families deserve first-class citizenship.

As I marched through Silverlake last night, just hours before Drew Barrymore would announce her intent to fight with us, I was reminded of something Harvey Milk said. "...once they realize that we are indeed their children and that we are indeed everywhere, every myth, every lie, every innuendo will be destroyed once and for all."

Related causes: Human Rights, Leaders

Tags: harvey milk, prop 8, california, gay