you need to touch those near you

you need to touch those near you

A follow up to my previous post and in remembrance of Harvey Milk. Milk was killed 30 years today. Me and some friends will be off to see the movie Milk today. We waited for this day rather than go when the movie opened on November 26. Film critic Roger Ebert feels Milk has achieved a goal 30 years after his death. Ebert maybe describing the way it is in Canada or his close knit group, I however feel that America has a long way to go yet.

"In 1977, Harvey Milk became the first openly gay man elected to public office in the United States. Yes, but I have become so weary of the phrase 'openly gay.' I am openly heterosexual, but this is the first time I have ever said so. Why can't we all be what we prefer? Why can't gays simply be gays, and 'unopenly gays' be whatever they want to seem? In 1977, it was not so. Milk made a powerful appeal to closeted gays to come out to their families, friends and co-workers, so the straight world might stop demonizing an abstract idea. But so powerful was the movement he helped inspire that I believe his appeal has now pretty much been heeded, save in certain backward regions of the land that a wise gay or lesbian should soon deprive of their blessings." - Roger Ebert in his review of Milk

For more insight see the Mayor of San Diego speak on the gay marriage.


We are making friends, we are advancing, we are making it, one person at a time. If you want to change the world, you have to let the world know you are here. This republican Mayor was opposed to gay marriage. He changed due to his relationship with his daughter, a lesbian.

Milk asked us to out ourselves. Many did. Here in Canada we have got to the point where two politicians can be big time players without needing to be identified as gay.

The republican Mayor of San Diego was touched by those he knew. If you want to change the world, you need to touch those near you.