Some Guys Are Normal

Milk

I've been meaning to blog about this for a while, but I keep getting busy with other things. You know how it goes. Anyway, I went to see Milk last Thursday with some friends. If you haven't heard of the movie you really need to get out more, but it's a biopic about Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to be elected to city government in the US, who was later assassinated.

The movie was great. Possibly one of the best movies I've ever seen. Sean Penn plays Harvey Milk, and he was amazing, especially considering what a stretch this character is from what he normally does. If you haven't seen Milk yet, plan to--it's well worth the time.

For me the movie was especially moving because of the timing with all of this Prop. 8 mess. Harvey Milk was one of the main players in the movement that defeated a proposed CA law that would ban gays from being teachers. It's truly amazing to see how similar the arguments against gay teachers were to the arguments today against Prop. 8, civil unions, employment protections, hate crimes laws, etc. It was equally amazing to see the passion the movement had back then. While some of my friends cried when Milk was assasinated, I had to hold back tears when I saw the protests form in the streets demanding change--it was that moving.

The religious right has been playing the "morality card" against the gays for a long time. The good news is that we're winning. As much as the anti-gay folks don't want to admit it, we are winning. We might have lost Prop. 8. It might be legal still to fire me for being gay in Texas, but if you compare where we are now to where we were then, you can see how far we've come. I'm glad this movie was able to remind me of that.

posted by Brady @ 8:03 AM