Milk
Like we mentioned on the slide about Brokeback Mountain, it’s important for young LGBTQIA+ individuals to know their history. Being gay wasn’t always as easy as movies like Love, Simon make it seem. The only hurdle wasn’t getting outed at school and maybe getting verbally harassed.
The hurdle was not getting killed or arrested.
Harvey Milk was a gay rights activist and the first openly gay person to be elected to public office in California. The 2008 film Milk, starring Sean Penn, chronicles the activist’s move from New York to San Francisco and his foray into politics. It shows his political campaigns against homophobic legislature and his runs for public office in the late ’70s.
Milk also dives into Harvey Milk’s personal life. The film shows his relationship with his much younger lover Scott Smith (James Franco), from their first meeting to their working relationship, with Smith acting as Milk’s campaign manager, before they eventually split.
Most importantly, Milk deals with the assassination of the gay rights activist in his own office at City Hall. On Nov. 27, 1978, fellow Supervisor Dan White (Josh Brolin), who had a complicated relationship with Milk and his views, walked into his office and shot him, execution style.
No, this isn’t a teen movie, and it doesn’t have a happy ending. But it’s a pivotal moment in history, and Harvey Milk is a figure everyone, gay or straight, should know about. He fought for the rights of gay people in California at a time when nobody was fighting for them, and for that, he needs to be remembered.