milk

As far as I am concerned, Milk is this year's best movie. Sean Penn is extraordinary. Wonderful. Floating on air.

The film is named for Harvey Milk, who was a gay activist in San Francisco in the 1970s. He was the first openly gay elected city official in the United States. But his career was short. He, and the then Mayor, were shot by a colleague in 1978.

To me, this film is about conviction, passion, leadership, and social justice.

It's also about the fact that progress is not automatic. In some ways things are better now, compared to 30 years ago. In some other ways things are clearly not better: Prop 8 just passed in California.

One message that Sean Penn's character keeps repeating in the movie is that gay people need to come out, they need be open about their sexuality. "They [straight people] will vote for us if they know one of us", he says.

But, straight people will only know gay people if the gay people are out of the closet.

I didn't hear that argument in any of the discussions around prop 8. On the contrary: the TV spots made a point of not showing gay people. Instead they focused on everyday straight people, probably because someone figured that giving voters someone to identify with (=another straight person) was the most important thing.

Maybe that was unfortunate.

Labels mean less when we know someone who can break the stereotype for us. That person, who helps us learn, can be a friend, a relative, a co worker, or a classmate.

Or, it can be a nationally known political leader. Look at Barack Obama. Where are the gay leaders of today?