Never blend in.

At my first screening of Milk, I came with a critical eye. There’s a lot of history here to recreate/relive. I had lived voraciously through its time in the States as a very public, fuck’m in the streets, gay activist, relishing my criminality, hating straights, hating myself, dancing my tits off most nights through university backed with my daily pursuit to service any number/variety of hot men over eight inches, 24/7, par excellence. So, I knew the scene, the politics, the Briggs, the Anita Bryants, (the Ted Haggards). The Harvey Milk story is gay America’s Martin Luther King story, already brilliantly chronicled in Rob Epstein’s 1985 Oscar-winning documentary The Times of Harvey Milk, based on Randy Shilts’ The Mayor of Castro Street (with yet another feature film in the works), and thirty years later, the same religious hegemonic crap is being protested in America today. Only back then, it was hardly about anything so trite as “gay marriage”. “Never Blend In” is the film’s promotional byline. Beyond King, the gay movement was a battle cry for liberation, FREEDOM baby, for ALL! For everyone. The “us” that Milk speaks of is everyone outside the “establishment”, the Man, any “authority” over our bodies. That great, idyllic, promise of American freedom, still only a dream, for those few who can still afford to dream.

And dream we must. But we must also live.

On a recent second viewing, I let this glorious gem of a film tell me its story, and O, what a story. An American story. An only in America story, because, lest we forget, America’s first impulse is to fight, first, foremost, and always. America was built (continues to be) on the conquer and slaughter of entire nations. Americans fight for everything, including their causes. You can’t win without a fight. And Americans can only win. (This, so brilliantly on display in yet another timely American film, Frost/Nixon). Number 1. We never quit. This is America.

The rights of Americans have all been hard fought for. Killed for. While I heartily welcome, invite other, un-American approaches, it’s inherently the American way.

The fight continues. And, we the people, will prevail.