Milk

OMG!! Milk was freaken awesome!

As always, Gus Van Sants kept us at an emotional distance, making it harder to connect to the majority of his characters, except the one that gives the audience access to the entire story. Back in Elephant, the first film I saw of his, Alex is our emotional access point, the person who the audience can really connect to. This puts more pressure on the lead, to act thought the fourth wall, so Sean Penn really had to work for it, and he did, and it showed in the film and the recognition he received. Also, Sean Penn smiled, a lot, truly emulating the late Harvey Milk, with gestures and crooked smiles and general beings.

I missed the first five mintues (Caroline ran late), so I don't know if they said in the begining that Dan White killed him, which might have made the film slightly less potent than just knowing that Milk would die, then the little shock if you didn't previously google before walking into their theater. Whats funny is in Middle School I wiki'ed Dan White in connection with the Twinkie Defense that got him off for the assassination of two government officials, I just didn't remember that it was Harvey Milk.

The death scene was beautifully shot, where Milk is in his office, Dan walks in, makes him go to his knees, and you see Dan standing behind him, gun drawn, then the shot and blood stain Milk, the camera panning as he falls forward, then out the window to the opera house, a poster of a large women sobbing in the way everyone must have felt like doing after news reached.

The use of news real in combination with film worked very well in this film, Anita the Hun Briant shown in brilliant Technicolor as the beautiful devil she is. The whole idea of protecting the children, shown for the idiocy it truly was. This also tied to the idea that in California, now, if your gay you can't adopt children already here, but if your heterosexual, unemployed and living with your parents and on well-fare, you can have a whole litter.

The Speeches given at the Oscars were brilliant. Dustin Lance Black quote was brilliant
"I think he'd want me to say to all of the gay and lesbian kids out there tonight who have been told that they are less than by their churches, by their government or by their families, that you are beautiful, wonderful creatures of value and that no matter what anyone tells you, God does love you and that very soon, I promise you, you will have equal rights federally, across this great nation of ours. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you, God, for giving us Harvey Milk."

I loved Sean Penn's speech, why "“you commie, homo-loving sons of guns.” ask, because quite simply it kicked but!

"For those who saw the signs of hatred as our cars drove in tonight, and, I think that it is a good time for those who voted for the ban against gay marriage to sit and reflect and anticipate their great shame and the shame in their grandchildren’s eyes if they continue that way of support. We’ve got to have equal rights for everyone. And there are these last two things. I’m very, very proud to live in a country that’s willing to elect an elegant man President."

A Gay Term Paper

Homosexuality has existed, openly, since Egypt. It was highly recognized in Ancient Greece, and the Romans had an actual marital relationship two male partners could enter into, this was made illegal after the Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity and Jesus Christ became the leading deity. Halfway across the world, India had similar customs at the start of the current era; China and Japan joined at the next turn of the millennium. During the Dark Ages, homosexuality all but died, having its rebirth, along with most of our modern ideals, during the Renaissance. There it flourished through the Age of Enlightenment, along the epicenter of scientific knowledge. Homosexuality was present during start of the American Revolution, gay unions first raising their heads in ’Boston Marriages” where two females in a committed relationship, where they were sharing household, granted rights similar to a married couple.

Yet this progress was halted, thanks to the Victorian Age, “Christian Morals” were once again at the focus of British, and, by proxy American minds. The new social order successfully crushed the developed debauchery of the Aristocratic order and reinstalled hope in the growing Middle Class, along rightfully slaying open sexuality, both female and gay. Here in the US, it stayed buried, through the Civil and First World War, because no soldier wanted to be the first to admit these ‘debase’ feelings to others, because of how contemporary culture stood. In those time, people who were homosexual denied it with ever fiber of their beings. Often times these ‘Closet Cases’ were isolated in remote country, never knowing there were others who where like them. In the major cities, a Gay underground developed. This secretive hiding changed during the Second World War, due in part to the 1920s, which successfully lifted away most of the Victorian Veil. When closet country boys where able to meet out city slickers, who knew the Network. While all the men where out, fighting to defeat the Nazis, (who, incidentally, actually shot at a successfully killed homosexual men, instead of merely just denying their existence) women where left here to fend for themselves, with each other.

The gay scene begin developing in the 1950s, coming to term during the Civil rights movement of the 1960s, coming mainstream in the 1970s. From then on out this microscopic community has played Israel, fighting much large, much more heavily armed mainstream society. Their, gays have been fighting for rights against closed-minded bigots, whose ‘moral superiority ’ and blind hatred have been grinded in since birth by their parents, by their churches, by their communities and by society.

The fight for equal rights started in the 1970s. The first gay couple who applied for a marriage license, Jack Baker and James Michael McConnell in Hennepin County, Minnesota, May 18 1970. The license is denied, and this denial was appealed all the way to the Minnesota Supreme Court, which refused to hear the case. Yet the current trend of Banning Gay Marriage in Certain States is because of a similar case that made it though the Supreme Court, demanding the couple in question was being denied right granted to them through Hawaii’s Constitution, this was in 1993, Hawaiian Legislators in 1998 drafted and ratified the Definition Amendment, legally defining marriage as a union between a man and a women., therefore, making it so that the Supreme Court couldn’t over rule it, because it was part of their Constitution.

Currently 32 states have officially “Banned” gay marriage, by an amendment to their constitution that legally defines marriage as a union between a man and a women, which is what conservative Floridians hope to do in the 2008 Amendment vote. Consequently, this ban fuels a negative attitude towards gays, that their love isn’t worthy of commitment or recognition. California and Massachusetts, along with six other countries have legalized “Same-sex Marriage”, including South Africa, which until about 18 years ago, denied rights based on skin color, so they’re clearly stepping in the right direction. 17 countries and five states recognize Civil unions; along with five states and seven countries that grant rights under other clauses. The first Civil Unions were offered in 1989 in Denmark.