Politician Suggests Telling The Truth For A Change - 'Milk' Review...

Posted on November 26, 2008 - 10:41pm by michael The political docu-drama has been a successful topic in 2008, with Milk and Frost/Nixon both being awarded richly-deserved Best Picture nominations, along with a whole list of other categories. Both tell the story of real-life historical events in political history, and both illustrate groundbreaking milestones in America's political progression. While Frost/Nixon centered around an completely unprecedented moment of presidential candor, Milk deals with the astonishing level of intolerance that existed in America in the 1970s.

Frost/Nixon was fascinating and incredibly important because it showed an example of a president who thought he was above the law but ultimately was called to account for his actions, while Milk is about the sheer difficulties involved in different kinds of people being awarded equal treatment in the country that centuries ago swore that all men were created equal. Harvey Milk was the first openly gay man elected to public office in California, but the movie isn't about him, it's about the struggle for the gay community to win equal rights in America. The Women's Civil Rights Movement began in earnest in the 1920's with the struggle for women's suffrage, Martin Luther King Jr. is the centerpiece of the African American  Civil Rights Movement, and Harvey Milk is credited with really beginning the Gay Civil Rights Movement in the 1970's. All three are different in so many ways, but ultimately they were all struggles for the same thing.

The movie follows the path of Harvey Milk's often unsuccessful political career, which always focused on winning equal rights and equal treatment of the homosexual community, which faced in much more severe form all of the same self-righteous attacks that they often face today. He moved from New York to the Castro section of San Francisco in the early 1970s to start a photography business with his partner Scott Smith, brilliantly performed by James Franco. Immediately upon arrival, the two receive blatant expressions of rage and unacceptance from their professional neighbors, who threaten to call the police if they so much as open their doors.

The two respond with maturity and class, and then set about to organize the purchasing power of the gay community at large, which sets off a snowball effect creating an incredibly powerful political voting block in the homosexual population. Milk is somewhat driven into a political career, as he is the centerpiece of the movement and his involvement is all but required. He loves the involvement, but has no interest in power or influence beyond the attainment of an environment of fairness and equal treatment for the homosexual community.

The detractors, on the other hand, offer arguments of such bigotry and self-righteousness that I'm curious if the movie will be attacked by their 21st century counter-parts for unfair representation. I have no interest in researching such things, but the conservative response to Milk's gay rights movement is so distasteful and arrogant to me that it seems racist. The religious community is presented as a bunch of Bible-thumping zealots who compare homosexuals to whores and thieves who are, of course, morally vacuous and who attack the institution of marriage, the basic building block of the American family.

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Remember a few years ago when Britney Spears married some guy in Vegas and then had the marriage annulled within a few hours, saying that she got married "as a joke"? I've always loved it when people say that homosexuals, even the ones who have been in monogamous relationships for decades, are the ones attacking the institution of marriage, while ignoring people like Britney, who has millions and millions of teenage fans and to whom marriage is, in her own words, "a joke."

But most of all, the movie causes us to look at the sheer lunacy of so twisting a statement like "All men are created equal and endowed with certain inablienable rights" that we can pick and choose groups of people that are not created equal and that don't deserve those rights. I can understand how America in the 19th and early 20th century could deny equal rights to women, no doubt arguing that they are "not men," but the denial of rights based on sexual preference? It's no different from demonizing people of a different religion.

The detractors argue that gay teachers will teach children to be gay, an argument that Harvey Milk famously ridiculed by asking if, by chance, homosexuality might be taught like any other subject. French, perhaps. Ask youself this - can you think of a single teacher you've had in all your life, even your favorite and most influential ones, who's personal lifestyle you now emulate? Yeah, neither can I. In an interview sequence late in the film chronicling the opinions of average Americans, nay-sayers make statements lik this:

You do what you want in the privacy of your own home. Don't tell me I gotta accept it in mine."

But therein lies the heart of the entire, incongruous argument. When you take away all the politics, the left and the right, the liberals and the conservatives, the Republicans and the Democrats, even the homosexuals and the heterosexuals, when you take all that away from the subject, what you have in the gay rights (and gay marriage) issues is one group of people telling another groups of people, "We don't believe in this so you can't do it." The homosexuals want to win rights for themselves, and the opposition, which I hesitate to give a political label, want to deny rights to other Americans, and I feel uncomfortable anytime the American government attempts to pass legislation to deny rights to its own citizens.

The problem is that homosexuality is a moral decision, and it's dangerous when the government attempts to legislate morality. Harvey Milk believed that everyone has their own right to pursue happiness in their own way, that no one should be given the power or the authority to make a moral decision for anyone else, least of all a politician or government. He did not seek recognition for his political successes, he wanted something very real for the gay community, something the fairness of which he and them could see with such clarity and obviousness that they were just as astonished as they were angered or offended at the opposition's vicious denials.

"I am not a candidate," Milk says. "I am part of a movement. The movement is the candidate."

The election of America's first African-American president in 2008 represents a tremendous step forward in American progression, a beacon of hope that America is emerging from it's dark past of slavery and racism. It's clear that America is also emerging out of the embarassing intolerance of groups like the homosexual community, but also clear that we have made steps in the right direction. A shallow, callous response will be that gays just want a gay president like African Americans, and ignore the more immediate nature of the argument. Homosexuality should never be an issue that defines a person's status in society, anymore than the color of their skin, neither of which they can change anymore than heterosexuals can be changed into homosexuals.

Harvey Milk was an American hero, a regular man who did what was needed at the time it needed to be done, and he gave his life to make a difference that he believed in. If more people did this, the world would undoubtedly be a better place.

The Bean Meter

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