After watching this movie I was so surprised that I had never heard of Harvey Milk and Proposition 6. Its ashame how these events are left out of our history books. We learn all about the struggles of immigrants, women and blacks in history but never about homosexuals. Gays have come a long way since the 70's, but that just proves that society still frowns upon them.
shareSince first coming out in 1996, I'd heard of Harvey Milk, but that was about it. Last year, I saw this movie, and I was deeply moved by it. Like you said, things have come a long way since the 1970s, but we still have a long way to go. Discrimination, hatred, and bigotry still raises its ugly head. At my last job, I was sexually harassed by my manager after he assumed that I was gay. At my job before that, a coworker found my profile on Yahoo, saw that I was gay, printed off my profile, and gave it to the president of the company along with false claims that I'd come onto him. I was written up for sexual harassment and fired a couple weeks later on false claims of poor job performance.
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Well, that was back in October 2001, so it's a bit late for that now.
shareWell, partly because Proposition 6 was resoundingly defeated, even before the Court would have challenged its constitutionality. Dan White, however much he resented Milk's politics, was not a backer (he even made a donation to the NO on 6 campaign), and even former Governor and future President Ronald Reagan urged a NO vote.
shareI hadnt heard of him either before I watched the film. I watched it because of Sean Penn, and he made me find out more about Harvey.
shareI'm old enough to remember reading about Harvey and the Mayor's murder in the newspaper and being shocked. The Mayor of San Francisco! Then I was outraged when his killer got off with a light sentence with his "Twinkie defense". That actually got more coverage outside California (I'm in Texas) than the original murders. I saw The Times of Harvey Milk when it was in theaters, but not a lot of people are fans of docs. So I was really happy when I heard that they were making Milk and that Gus Van Sant would be directing and Sean Penn would be starring. Finally Harvey's story would be getting out to the masses.
And how about that James Franco? He's a fan of Van Sant's from My Own Private Idaho. He contacted him and said he didn't care if he played the pizza guy, he just wanted to be part of the film. It turns out with his hair dyed blond and a mustache, his resemblance to Smith isn't bad. And he can act a little ;)
Scroll down to see a little GIF of Harvey and Scott in their hippie days:
http://www.queer-arts.org/milk/index.html
and here's a pic of Sean and James:
http://img2.timeinc.net/people/i/2009/database/jamesfranco/james_franco2_240.jpg
The California Legislature just passed the FAIR Education Act requiring the inclusion of the political, economic, and social contributions of persons with disabilities and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people into educational textbooks and the social studies curricula in California public schools by amending the California Education Code.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAIR_Education_Act
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCaInxgYErM
However, opponents of the FAIR Education Act are currently gathering signatures to overturn it through a referendum on the state ballot.