... Because we just never seem to learn. “Milk” is definitely not the best or most gripping movie ever made. Political activism, campaigning and the gay movement set in the 1970’s is a story far removed from today, but screaming to be told 40 years later.
And really, hats off to Sean Penn who stole the show by a gay mile, personifying Harvey Milk and everything he stood for. I admire the way he utterly transforms into the character so absolutely, so entirely that you forget it’s the same dude. The same guy who played a convicted murderer in “ Man Walking, the same guy who played a mentally challenged father in I am Sam. And now the same guy who played a gay man so convincingly and so unabashedly. I can't imagine many men who would be willing to step out of their heterosexual shoes and do that, in the interests of telling such a compelling story.
But the thing about this movie is that it was set in a time before I was even born. The 1970’s was the hippie era – sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, drag queens, gays and lesbians, free love, flower power. I was born in the ‘80’s. The world moved on from the ‘70’s and not just in America. Blacks fought for their civil rights and today we have a black President in the White House. Women fought for their civil liberties and today stand at the top of every economic, political, social and corporate ladder there is. Yet we still have this gaping gay grey area.
Perhaps that’s because while life moved forward from the days of racism, bigotry and prejudice, the world became more religious and fought many wars over 4 decades, thanks to religion and God.
And God didn’t change his mind about homosexuality in 40 years. The books still preach the same gospels as they did centuries ago when they were written, and homosexuality is still a damnable offense in his books, no matter what language it's in. It’s unnatural, unworldly and plainly satanic.
Can two men or two women reproduce? Can they be a family, in the same way men and women have built families since the beginning of humanity? No. And these are all questions raised in the movie, but questions we still cannot answer.
The thing is, the expectations and perceptions of a family have changed so drastically since Harvey Milk was faced with those very questions. So if Madonna can adopt a child from Malawi and Brangelina can adopt orphans from Cambodia, Ethiopia and Vietnam and raise them with their own biological children within the same family, then where is this so called normal standard of a family?
If it’s family values we’re talking about, then that’s a universal standard that doesn’t have anything to do with the people that make up the family. Husband, wife, son, daughter... they’re just labels. We teach our children to be kind, loving, compassionate and hard working. There are some basics that don’t change, whether it’s a mother and father raising the family, a mother and mother, father and father, single mother, single father, grandfather or grandmother, uncle or aunt. As long as there’s love, what more does a family need?
It’s something we just can’t seem to agree on. Religion. What my religion says is different from what your religion says. My Prophet looks different from yours. My religion is “better” than yours.
That’s what it's come to today, the way I see it.
Harvey Milk couldn’t take on the fight for gay rights for the entire world. But he sure as hell took it on for America, and I think he shaped the U.S. in a way that helped it live up to its definition better than any other country. A free country, where everyone is equal.
