I was reading this excellent New York Times review of the film, "Milk", and it occurred to me that while movies like "Passion of the Christ" and other movies that appeal to rightwing Christians have had organized movements to get people to the theaters, I've not heard of anything similar for this movie, which sounds like a moving and celebratory tribute to a gay American pioneer.
What I decided to do was organize a group to go see it this Sunday in Seattle, and invited nearly everyone I know. For those who are traveling for Thanksgiving, I urged them to organize a group in their area. And when I thought a little more about it, I thought it would be a good idea to spread the call even wider.
In recent years, my partner and I have stopped going to Gay Pride celebrations as regularly. They've become tame and over-commercialized and lost their political edge. We say "we're gay all year" and sleep in. It's not like we haven't been to our share of them in the past.
I came out 20 years ago at 15, and got involved in the community right away. It was an amazing and scary time to come out, at the height of the AIDS crisis with a government unwilling to do enough to stop it. The parades in those days mixed the celebration of ourselves with the urgency of a fight for survival.
Part of my coming out was going to weekend meetings of SMYAL, the Sexual Minority Youth Assistance League, in Washington, D.C. My weekly pilgrimages from the suburbs into the big city afforded me a great peer support system, a lifesaving early education about HIV/AIDS, and a diverse, detailed history of the LGBT community that I surely wouldn't have gotten elsewhere.
So yes, 20 years on, our gay pride parades have gotten stale, but the recent rallies all over the country in response to Proposition 8 have reminded me that movements are what you make them. For too long I've been taking a breather, enjoying the gains we've made and letting big, out-of-touch organizations speak for me and commercial interests co-opt my community.
As a result, I—and a lot of other people—haven't stepped in and taken the reins when our community leaders have failed us. Many of us realize we didn't do all we could in opposition to Proposition 8, thinking progress was inevitable and we could ride the current.
Milk is arriving at just the right moment. It's the story of a good man who stood up and did the work that needed doing, fought the fight that needed fighting. This is the perfect time to revisit the story of one of our heroes and draw strength and inspiration from his words and deeds. From the review:
“My name is Harvey Milk, and I want to recruit you.” That was an opening line that the real Milk often used in his speeches to break the tension with straight audiences, but the film shows him deploying it with mostly gay crowds as well, with a slightly different inflection. He wants to recruit them into the politics of democracy, to persuade them that the stigma and discrimination they are used to enduring quietly and even guiltily can be addressed by voting, by demonstrating, by claiming the share of power that is every citizen’s birthright and responsibility.
I am going to see this film this weekend, and I'm going to take as many people along as possible. I hope you do the same.