Thursday, February 25, 2009 9:02am
We’ve been taking some beatings lately. We always do, but reading the headlines has been especially hard lately. This month:
• A senator publicly called us the biggest threat to homeland security.
• An Australian priest was dismissed for blessing 10 gay/lesbian unions in his extremely long career—oh yeah, and he was letting women take the pulpit.
• A bishop in Pennsylvania wants to close down Misericordia University’s Multicultural office because they had a gay rights advocate come speak to the students.
• North Carolina is attempting to put a ban on gay marriage up for popular vote—remember how that went in California?
• A Republican in Colorado lumped us in with murders and adulterers and said that if we don’t legalize their sin we can’t legalize ours.
And that’s not even the half of it. It seems like every time I turn on the news or look at my homepage, I see another loss that we’re suffering. I’ve been looking for some solace, and I found it somewhere I didn’t expect it: The Oscars.
Many of you will probably think that it’s silly of me to take any sort of comfort when watching a group that is completely out of touch with the rest of America, but I did. Amiss, all the recent hate speak and attempted encroachments on our unalienable human rights, the powers that be sent me two major victories in the form of Dustin Lance Black and Sean Penn.
Their speeches touched me and gave me a hope that I have longed for. Perhaps, it is because they are living the dream—I want to stand right where they did and have the courage to say the things that they’ve said—but maybe it was the honesty of the things they’ve said.
Of course, not everyone will agree with me. India censored any mention of Black being gay from their broadcast. My father dismissed Sean Penn because of his wild past and made a crude joke about him being a method actor. A columnist for The Boston Herald called Dustin Lance Black “a pathetic martyr”—he obviously never grew up in an oppressive environment. A guy I went to high school with—he’s a truly great actor—decided that Milk could not be a story worth telling because San Francisco is such a liberal place and his position wasn’t essential enough to the country’s government. Nevertheless, I was filled with pride on Sunday night, and I am still moved by the beautiful things that were said.
We’ve been taking some beatings lately. We always do, but reading the headlines has been especially hard lately. This month:
• A senator publicly called us the biggest threat to homeland security.
• An Australian priest was dismissed for blessing 10 gay/lesbian unions in his extremely long career—oh yeah, and he was letting women take the pulpit.
• A bishop in Pennsylvania wants to close down Misericordia University’s Multicultural office because they had a gay rights advocate come speak to the students.
• North Carolina is attempting to put a ban on gay marriage up for popular vote—remember how that went in California?
• A Republican in Colorado lumped us in with murders and adulterers and said that if we don’t legalize their sin we can’t legalize ours.
And that’s not even the half of it. It seems like every time I turn on the news or look at my homepage, I see another loss that we’re suffering. I’ve been looking for some solace, and I found it somewhere I didn’t expect it: The Oscars.
Many of you will probably think that it’s silly of me to take any sort of comfort when watching a group that is completely out of touch with the rest of America, but I did. Amiss, all the recent hate speak and attempted encroachments on our unalienable human rights, the powers that be sent me two major victories in the form of Dustin Lance Black and Sean Penn.
Their speeches touched me and gave me a hope that I have longed for. Perhaps, it is because they are living the dream—I want to stand right where they did and have the courage to say the things that they’ve said—but maybe it was the honesty of the things they’ve said.
Of course, not everyone will agree with me. India censored any mention of Black being gay from their broadcast. My father dismissed Sean Penn because of his wild past and made a crude joke about him being a method actor. A columnist for The Boston Herald called Dustin Lance Black “a pathetic martyr”—he obviously never grew up in an oppressive environment. A guy I went to high school with—he’s a truly great actor—decided that Milk could not be a story worth telling because San Francisco is such a liberal place and his position wasn’t essential enough to the country’s government. Nevertheless, I was filled with pride on Sunday night, and I am still moved by the beautiful things that were said.
First of all, Milk was an amazing movie. There will always be obstacles for us to overcome because not everyone knows, or takes the time to know, what we are like. If people would only take the time to accept us for who we are, we wouldn't feel the awkwardness to represent who we are in public. Some have no shame, such as myself, but for others it makes it that more difficult to come out.