We need Harvey Milk right now

I just watched the trailer for Gus Van Sant’s Harvey Milk film for the first time and was surprised to find myself crying.

Crying because I never got to see Harvey Milk in person, though I’ve seen him on film, and somehow I felt some of his magic.
Crying because of the power and beauty of a moment when he and other gay people stopped cowering and owned their lives in public.
Crying because he’s not here now and in a little less than two months California will vote on whether or not the State Constitution should be changed so that I and “my kind” cannot be married and I am not sure enough straight people will know and care enough save my marriage.
Crying because a “tough and masculine” and certainly straight actor Sean Penn is playing Harvey with such dignity and so beautifully and that I am living to see and American straight man publicly not cower from an act that could “threaten” the defensive-ness we call masculinity.
Crying because I’m just so damn grateful that Robin WIlliams did not, as was once promised, play Harvey.

On November 4th, have the guts to live in hope. Vote no on Proposition 8.

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The Mormon church is spending its money and time trying to pass Prop 8. and hard-knuckling its members for cash as a test of faith rather than on helping its members with defaulting mortgages, gas prices, bankruptcies and many other pressing, real problems for LDS members)

Posted by email from heathergold’s posterous