The Legacy of Harvey Milk: THe Movie and Then Some

Harvey Milk was killed, not specifically because he was gay, but because the fact that he was gay caused him to make certain decisions that ultimately led to his death.

He was the first openly gay office holder in California in the mid to late seventies when even those of liberal reputation and tendencies seemed not to be able to accept the prospect of gays living openly and freely.

For Harvey Milk, the constant harassment he and his friends endured at the hands of the police and politicos forced him you to seek political office and to change from within that which apparently could not be changed in any other way.

What amazes me is that to some it is still not as obvious as cold in Antarctica that all men are indeed created equal. And by men, of course, I mean people of all colors, people of all sexual orientation, people of all religious persuasions. And because they are equal they deserve equal protection and equal rights under the law.

I’m sure most of us who are not gay give little thought to the position of gays in our society. We may even think or suspect that whatever Harvey Milk endured in the seventies has since been eradicated, solved, forgotten or simply swept far enough under the rug of responsibility that some unsuspecting future generation will have to deal with it.

And except for the nasty gay marriage controversy that seems to blip the radar screen of public awareness on what seems like an annual basis, that might even be true. 

Six states have recognized gay marriages; our own state of Connecticut, neighboring Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire, and Iowa.

Those states that refuse to acknowledge gay marriage generally use as their argument the obvious fact that a gay marriage will do nothing to propagate the race. This is not really the issue though, is it? These people, who may very well be gay, not by choice, but by genetic design, will do nothing to propagate the race anyway, married or not. Unless of course, in their efforts to be in a loving relationship, they find they must also live a lie, and marry not for love, but for a kind of convenience. There may indeed be offspring from that kind of union, but it might then be argued that there is then the sacrificing of one individual for another, and certainly that is not what marriage is about either.

They also argue that gays in our society are a danger to our children, especially if they are in a position to mold their young minds in our public schools. I would argue that there is no more chance, or there is just as much chance, of the proselytizing of young children by gays as there is of the same effort of heterosexuals to indoctrinate children into any of their myriad sexual tendencies. In the movie “Milk” a gay pride marcher held a banner in front of her that proclaimed, “I teach science, not sex.” Well, of course, why would anyone suspect anything different?

And those states that fail to recognize gay marriages, regardless of the argument that they use to justify their position, should recognize the morally suspect position they find themselves in, since the legality of gay marriage in any state makes suspect the moral position of all the other states.

Those states that fail to recognize gay marriages should also recognize that the gay marriage rights they fight today eventually be will universally accepted as a valid way of life.

If you are now busy scampering around for something to bludgeon me with you should take a brief tour of history.

One hundred and fifty years ago a Black person was considered less than human (only 3/5 of a person for purposes of Congressional representation).

One hundred years ago a woman was considered unqualified to vote.

Thirty years ago, if a young man was not twenty-one, he could die for his country, but could not vote for or against those who might ultimately send him to his heroic grave.

I’m sure no thinking person today would suggest that any of those aforementioned positions should still be true today.

It am also sure that it will eventually be generously said of those who today posit that gay marriages are an affront to God, a danger to children, and a blight on society, that they knew not whereof they spoke, that they were victims of the times in which they lived.

They will seem quaint, like the man, who upon learning of the invention of electricity mockingly asks, “Yes, but what good is it?”

This is the future, my friends. Trust me, I know these things.

Vampires and Immortalilty

I remember my mother struggling up from the couch once at an age very near to my own. As she grunted up from her supine position she said to me, “Don’t get old, Gerry.”

I lay on the floor watching television. I turned my head to the side and back and smiled. I don’t intend to I said to myself. “I’ll try not to,” I said to her.

Well, so much for that bit of facetious immortal adolescent wisdom. Now I have my own aches and pains, aches and pains I swore I would never have, and which I still believe I am too young to experience. My mother no doubt felt the same way.

Each stab of pain in the shoulder, the back, the neck, the teeth sadly reaffirms the unmistakable reality that I am not now, and I must admit, never was, immortal. And this is not a bad thing.

I would not want to be immortal.
 

Think about Vampires. They are universally thought of as evil, bloodsucking demons that prowl the night. Granted, they do suck blood, but the whole evil thing must have really come about because, after two hundred, three hundred, or a thousand years, what other choice do you have? I mean how many millions of dollars can you accrue before you lose interest in buying anything with those millions? How many wars and famines can you experience before you start to lose your grip on reality? How many people can you watch drop away from you like so many flies caught under a swatter before you wonder if your own life is lacking some essential element?

No, immortality might be good for some, but not for me. I’ll just put in my eighty or ninety and retire. Maybe I’ll even get a gold watch, who knows. Although by then my arms will probably be so thin the watch will slip up to my artificial shoulder.

The Game's Afoot

I have this rich aura about me, these invisible emanations, these waves of effervescent particulate matter that affects inanimate objects, or more particularly, affects a single inanimate object.

I have discovered during my aggressive morning walks that my mere presence causes a particular street light to flicker and blink off as I approach it, then to sputter and cough back to life again after I have passed beneath it.

I can deduce only two possible causes for this anomaly. The first, of course, is the aforementioned emanations, which have the aforementioned affect on the aforementioned object.

The other possibility is that some sort of creepy nocturnal machinations are occurring in the white colonial home hidden behind that cone of light.

My guess. Doubtless some kind of experimentation is being conducted on alien bodies dug up from a nearby gravel pit site. A guard, presumably dressed in green army fatigues, controls the light from inside the white colonial to keep curious passersby from discovering their nefarious nocturnal operations.

The game is afoot my friends. No, wait, the door is ajar. No, wait…

Another One of Those Things That Keep Me Up At Night

I find that during my energetic morning walks I need to walk directly in the center of the road (returning to the side of the road only long enough to avoid early morning commuters). If I don’t I can feel my body leaning in the direction of the crown of the road toward one side or the other. I then subsequently feel the conscious effort I must make to lean my body back toward the center of the road.

This, of course, detracts from the general walking experience, and usually causes me to lose my place in my book, upsetting the basic flow of the narrative.

You wouldn’t think the crown of the road would be so pronounced that your body would react that way, but it does, or mine does.

File this under "Another one of those things that keep me up at night."

A Pique of Passion

As a younger man I thought I was in love. My love was treacherous, however, and I was left with a heart crumpled like a fragile piece of glass in a clenched fist.

As an artist I thought I had captured a history of my love that would last through the ages and that I would smile upon beatifically in my declining years.

I destroyed the images of my love in a moment of anger and madness. I did not even have the energy or spirit to separate her from images to which she had no claim.

I have known love since then and know that what I knew was not love then. Now I am saddened, not by the loss of my love, but by the loss of the images (not of my alleged love, but of the rest) that I destroyed in a pique of passion.

God and the Fly

I am of the opinion that God does not discriminate. Squash a bug, kill a human, it is all the same. In the eyes of God life is life.

It is man who makes the distinctions and gives certain creatures preeminence and power over others.

Having said that I have to admit that God made a colossal mistake when he came up with the idea of the fly. A fly is the most disgusting creature in his otherwise splendid repertoire. I have no doubt that flies serve some deliberate function, aside from annoying me that is. But you would think that a being who came up with the exquisite contours of the female form could devise a better way to expedite the process of dust unto dust than to cover a recently departed road kill with a seething mass of absolutely vile, pestiferous maggots that will slowly turn into an obnoxious hoard of buzzing, disease ridden vermin.

What the f*** was he thinking?

The Toilet

Yesterday my wife accused me of not knowing how to flush the toilet. I don't mean by that, that she accused me of leaving my waste in the bowl to coagulate like pot of odiferous stew. What I mean is that she accused me of improperly flushing the toilet, as though there was some trick to pushing down on the chrome knob on the side of the toilet that she knew and I did not.

She made this accusation because she heard the toilet running some time after I had flushed it. After giggling the knob to stop the toilet from running she came out into the living room and said, "You have be more careful when you flush the toilet."

I just looked at here. Here was something else she could blame on me.

"And you're just going to ignore me," she said.

I said, "Well, let me ask you this, do you intend to stand like a sentinel at the toilet every time you flush it to make certain it flushes porperly?"

If she was somehow willing to do that I was going to say, 'Have fun, but don't expect me to join you. I know why the toilet runs occasionally, even if you do not."

Instead she said, "That doesn't happen to me." Not that it hadn't happened yet, but that it doesn't happen, as though the Toilet Gods had preordained that all her flushes would be successful.

I looked at her, speechless. I wanted to explain to her how a toilet works, how a rubber stopper in the toilet tank sometimes does not sit properly in the hole that allows water into the toilet bowl, and how it is that imporper sitting that is allowing water to sneak past the stopper into the bowl and thus causing the bowl to run. I wanted to tell her how it is luck, blind, dumb luck, mere chance, happenstance that causes the bowl to flush properly one time and not the next, and that when it fails to flush properly it could happen as easily to her as to me.

But I said nothing. In the overall scheme of things, this was a fairly minor event, and if she derives pleasure, or a sense of accomplishment from knowing how to flush the toilet while I do not, who am I to suggest her day will come.

Libraries, Laminate floors, and "World Without End"

I just picked up Ken Follet’s new 36 CD book, “World Without End”. It is the sequel to the wonderful “Pillars of the Earth”, “ a sweeping, epic novel set in twelfth-century England centered on the building of a cathedral and the men, women, and children whose lives it changed forever.”

I have been nearly rabid with anticipation for this book (which continues the story of the townsfolk of Kingsbridge two hundred years later) since I first heard it was out. So eager was I that I was almost tempted to finish my current book on CD after I listened to Ken Follet’s book. That book, “Bridge of Sighs”, by Richard Russo, the same author who brought us “Empire Falls”, which many doubtless will remember as the delightful HBO presentation starring the late Paul Newman, is captivating in its own right, however. Captivating enough, certainly, that Ken Follet’s book, it will simply have to wait.

The anticipation I feel for new books by beloved authors today is the same anticipation I felt in the sixties and seventies when the Beatles or Bob Dylan put out a new album or the latest issues of Spider-man or the Avengers were due to appear at the local drug store.

Admittedly, a book on CD is not the same as the reading of a book, but I find I now can absorb double the literature I did before books on CD and MP3s came into being. I can listen to books on my MP3 player during the day and read my books at night; two for the price of one almost, although not quite.

Indeed, I suppose I must also credit the tiny little MP3 player with re-establishing my long dormant relationship with the library. I spent a fair amount of time running my fingers along the spines of books in my local library as a boy, and to a lesser extent as an adolescent. But I found it easier, later on, to simply buy books, at the Newstand (the precursor to Barnes and Noble) or at tag sales. There was no time limit on the reading of books this way and one was able to, gradually, build a library of one’s own (for which bookcases would eventually need to be built, walls painted, laminate floors laid down, planter benches built for a patient friend- no wait, that’s another story).

And I must say (before the snoring begins) that anything that brings me, or anyone, back to the library is a good thing. A library is a central repository of free information that is available to anyone, to everyone, regardless of knowledge or ability. How terrible would it be if we were to wake up tomorrow and find out they were all gone because no one found the need to go there anymore?

A Place to Rant

Ahhh! A place to unwind and rant.



I have no doubt that ranting here will be a bit like yelling down a stone well. All I am likely to hear in return is the shrill sound of my own voice. Still, I now join the hundreds, the millions, the hundreds of millions who do the same thing every day. I will probably be no different than them.

I will be as original as an Indian Monsoon. I will be as pleasing and delightful as a Hurricane. I will be as wanted as a wart.

My rants will be mundane, moribund, maybe mellifluous, magnificent some will say, in the final analysis, moot.

When I am not ranting I may subject you to poetry that will doubtless make Vogon poetry seem like T.S. Elliot. I may allow you to view videos I make on subjects that may alternately turn your stomach or cause to you to hold your sides tightly in to keep them from splitting.

The truth is I do not know what I will say here, or do here; what you will read here or view here. I only know that confession is supposed to be good for the soul. I guess we'll see if that's true.