MILK

I'm just home and recovered from the latest Sean Penn biopic, MILK, based on the political life of Harvey Milk, slain gay San Francisco politician. JEEZ! From the opening shots of the movie, my eyes filled and that sensation I was about to cry-me-a-river came to my jaws. My eyes never dried in the 2+ hours that followed.

Gus Van Sant has created a masterpiece in LGBT cinema. Indeed, US cinema. Sean Penn ... from Scott Piccoli in FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH to this portrayal is amazing: this actor must rank in the top handful of artists/actors. I did not know Milk, moved to San Francisco 10 years after his assassination, but I know a bit about the City he himself came to from New York, to change his life. San Franciscans mark the assassinations of Milk and Mayor George Moscone every year with the same candlelight march you will see at the end of the movie, and I remember my first march. Quiet. Hushed. 10 years on people still shocked by the act where Our ranks were Thinned.

I feared Penn would parody Milk, mechanize a renowned, humorous, intelligent gay activist. But Penn showed no fear - NO FEAR - in portraying Milk, even to my view taking on such a range of emotions of sexual minorities - mockery, passion, heart-break, Penn hit every note, naturally. Real Professional. He did it so naturally that his first deep kiss with another male actor went almost unnoticed. He had become Harvey Milk, gay man. Angry Gay Man. "I have done the state some service and it knows it."

Van Sant spliced much archival footage of San Francisco in general and the Castro neighborhood in particular. I know that place like the back of my hand, where Harvey's camera shop used to sit, that CASTRO theatre where I took my sister to see GONE WITH THE WIND. The Underground Station where Milk mounts a crate to demand his new community respond to the official brutality of Old San Francisco. Milk's friend, Tom Ammiano appears to heckle John Briggs, who sought to fire all LGBT teachers and their supporters[!] Ammiano was not only a friend of Milk's, but also at the time was a grade-school teacher. Ammiano went on to be on the Board of Supervisors, ran for mayor, and is now in the California State Legislature. Milk's encounter with Cleve Jones, with those trademark eyeglasses, made me sob. Jones is responsible for The Quilt, which if you've never seen it you cannot know LGBT anger - that memorial of the dead.

How times and one's better efforts change!

I was mindful of how Milk followed his mission, even after age 40 it wasn't too late. Some stories DO take time to tell. Bernard Shaw was 41 when he got his first play written. Christopher Isherwood 51 when he met the love-of-his-Life. Mindful how he had to make sacrifices to follow that Life Force that drove him, even at the cost of a relationship, to fulfill his Task. It's the end of the year, time to clean our lives of people who aren't there to help and fill our cups with people who will. That is my Coming out 2009. Eleggua is already pointing me ...

I left the theatre more angry at that slim voter majority in California that passed Prop 8 and at this president-elect for taking a landslide election and making it look like a similar slim victory, especially in his horrific naming of "pastor" Rick Warren, Minister Homophobe, to speak at his inauguration. What would Harvey say? Obama's team says it's a nod to the Diversity of the Country: No, it is further evidence "Christianity" has no moral authority in the West, and, LGBT's must come out of the bars and bathhouses and smash some windows. That we are viewed still as a fringe, powerless sect, like CHILDREN. Will Obama appoint an anti-Semite to spread his filth? A Klansman's Grand Wizard? A Southern Baptist who demands wives submit to their husbands? Hell, No!! Those prejudices are beyond the pale because of the activism of those communities.

Please see this movie. And if it gets you like it did me look for THE TIMES OF HARVEY MILK, a 1980's documentary about Milk. As far as Obama and his pal, Warren: I don't know what to say. Whether Obama dis-invites the Wretch or Warren backs out is immaterial. Day after Day, Obama tosses another rock at the body politic, the commonweal.

The Dissing of Fem Black Gays by Macho Black Gays

"UNLEASH THE QUEEN" - Queer Nation motto, circa 1990

There's a lot to unpack when trying to talk about hatred of gays WITHIN the gay community.

First a few observations: it happens, just as it happens among women, among Blacks, among Latinos - all who have been taught this aversion.

Second, man and male are two different things, of course. Male is a biological distinction; man being a social one. Males come in embryos, much of the plant world, other species, and you and me. Man is more of less a human being over 18 [vs. a boy or infant]. I say all this because masculinity and manhood are social constructs not Natural ones, and as social constructs they change over time. Acting like a MAN/being masculine is not something from Nature but from the political world. Too many men and women have NO appreciation of this fact, but think our behaviors are set in nature by God. Rubbish. Just as we have been taught by dominant culture to hate Blackness, so too we've been taught to hate women [gay or straight], darker skin among non-white peoples, and certain characteristics deemed threatening by dominant culture. Some may acknowledge this and insist their preference for MAN/MASCULINE is just a preference.

More rubbish. These values were instilled, taught to us, often by entities that did not have our best interest in mind: this fact demands we examine our Views and take noting for granted.
Dominant culture found best our current arrangement of one man-one women in holy matrimony to control laborers and to assure property was bequeathed ONLY to the man's offspring. At one time in human history, believe it or not, there was no such arrangement and women bore children from different men without controversy. When property became central - more or less when nomadic cultures settled into farms and settlements - men wanted their land to go only to their children for the preservation of the community so it was deemed necessary to control women's sexuality. Homosexual sex was initially disparaged among groups whose numbers were threatened, as in Jews in biblical times. It was not disparaged among the dominant culture of the day - Roman and Greek. So among assaulted tribes, homosex is a threat to the perceived preservation of the group.

For reasons I cannot fathom, just as we have kept an early 18th century pubic school structure right into the present day, our society is obsessed with a post-nomadic, agricultural era morality around gender and sexuality - I speak directly to the obsession with the Bible as more than a beautiful history but a blueprint for a post-industrial, postmodern, post feudal society. Again, this is equally absurd as relying on old modes of public education, yet we do! This is ALL reinforced by a dominant culture which - as the victors - lends out rewards and meets punishments, which most docile people accept, swallow, and think their own "preferences." So, Black gay men lack reverence for other gay men [feminine, Black] because they have been taught to do so as a subtle means of controlling their compliance within the culture, to keep them more likely to stay within the flock - which is producing babies and being a docile worker who must provide for house and home for said babies (a few generations ago, a bachelor had no hope of being promoted in major companies since the companies thought a married, father was less likely to rock the boat).

Ultimately, endowed with such stupid prejudices/preferences, these narrow-minded Black gay men will not grow into a revolutionary cadre - this phenomenon transcends race/ethnicity, of course, functioning the exact same way among other wage-slave, working class peoples. This is a conversation that has run through my gay/queer existence since high school in the early 80's and met documentation in my Queer Nation/SF 90's .