"ce qui embellit le désert," dit le petit prince, "c'est qu'il cache un puits quelque part..."
"what makes the desert beautiful," said the little prince, "is that somewhere it hides a well."
it's just easier not to care sometimes. stop insisting at everyone to look. sometimes i feel bad, but most of the time i'm just a bit annoyed. i just want it to go away. and i am starting to lose my patience. there is a gap between what i want and what i get. anywhosies...
i'm so behind but i finally watched the movies "la vie en rose" and "milk" this weekend. both were very good movies, "la vie en rose" more entertaining and "milk" more educational and emotionally hard-hitting. the fact that they are based on real people and events intensifies the impact of the films. "milk" was especially moving because incomprehensibly gay rights is still a big issue today. considering how it's been like 30 years since harvey milk's assassination, one would think we'd have made a bigger progress than we actually have.
11 years ago
2 comments:
To get an idea how far gay rights has come... depends on your age and where you lived since that time. In the 1950's in Chicago. the only thing gays had were bars, usually located in bad neighborhoods, and often raided for no apparent reasons. If you happened to be there when that happened, and your name was printed in newspapers... chances are you lost your job and even led some to suicide. In the early 50s, I quit high school, because I had those kind of tendencies, and back then being queer,( that is what we were called) or just knowing someone gay was considered"Taboo" in school, the work place or within your family!
Many people believe San Francisco has always been a liberal city. That's not so! There were laws on the City's books, that in the early 1960s, that if you wanted to dress in drag, you had to wear a lapel tag stating "I AM A BOY", or you could be arrested, even on Halloween! It took many courageous drag queens who fought back to overturn those laws. One of them was Jose Sarria, who ran or Supervisor 15 years before Harvey Milk. and received over 6,000 votes.
That helped to spawn gay politics...
There is now a S.F. street named after him.
In the early 1970's, A bunch of gays
and 6 teams, started the first gay organized softball league in the country.(today there are over 50 such leagues throughout the USA)
Gay political clubs formed, and straight politicians vied for our votes... Mayor Moscone, who was elected in 1975, appointed the first openly gay person ever in S.F. to his administration.Moscone also made appearances at many gay events... most that were not political in nature. He helped fund raisers and came to gay sporting events... but the thing that gave the gay rights movement,movement was Anita Bryant, and some of her pals within the far right religious groups. Many like myself, came out of our closets because of them, and made sure we would never go back in. She helped to make our movement front page news throughout the country. We began to have many non-gays join in our battle for rights. When she led voters in Dade County Florida to overturn a gay rights ordinance on 6/7/77, it caused a ripple effect felt all the way in San Francisco. That night, Harvey Milk led an impromptu march from the Castro, past City Hall and to Union Square. By the time we got there, we had over 5,000 people joining in. My iconic photo of Harvey holding a candle in one, and a bullhorn in the other hand, and a sign in the background saying SAVE OUR RIGHTS, was picked up by the Associated Press and introduced Harvey, as an openly gay spokesperson 5 months before he was elected! Prior to that and after, Gay Pride Events drew more every year... After Harvey became the first Openly gay male elected to a big city public office,many more followed, including in the congress that after Harvey and George Moscone's assassination in 1978.
I moved back to Chicago in 1985, and the progress made here, and throughout the country has been great. Chicago has an openly gay elected Alderman, the city played host to the Gay Games, that drew over a hundred thousands fans and participants, The Cubs have an annual "OUT" Day at Wrigley Field... the Gay Pride Parades attracts over 400,000 and the Chicago Historical Museum has an ongoing "OUT at the CHM" series that honors contributions made by gays in Chicago and elsewhere...
But the one of the best changes
that I noticed, came when I attended a stage play at a nearby public High School,and one of the actor students listed in the PlayBill, in his "Bio" that he belonged to the Gay/Straight Alliance... Here in Chicago kids no longer have to quit high school, or adults have to leave their hometowns to be themselves, and that goes for most big cities and many small towns across our nation.
i mean obviously there's been significant improvements over the past 30 years. i just wanted to highlight the fact that despite all the big advancements of the last 30 years, there are still unresolved issues such as the debate over gay marriage, don't ask don't tell policy, hate crimes, etc.
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