November
5 Did "Milk" miss the opportunity to change history?

yes.

"Milk" may have killed Prop 8, but now, Prop 8 will bolster "Milk."

Gay marriage is unpopular because of deap-seated convictions on the part of most human beings in most societies. A movie cannot change that.

It is the height of arrogance to assume that if someone disagrees with you that they must simply be "ignorant" and need to be "educated".

Luis: Slavery, Jim Crow laws, anti-miscegenation laws, and every other part of the oppression of blacks were likewise based on deep-seated beliefs, many of them "religious". That does not make them any less ignorant. We will look back on this proposition as we now do on Jim Crow laws as a relic of a horribly prejudiced and needlessly hateful people.

"Gay marriage is unpopular because of deap-seated convictions on the part of most human beings in most societies."

You might want to keep in mind that the majority of people under 30 are in favor of letting gays marry, and they're not changing their mind as they age. In other words, is not so deep seated after all. Once the bigots of the older, over 30 generations die off, gay marriage will be legalized with very little controversy. Then people will look back at the anti-gay marriage crowd as being of the same ignorant mindset as those against mixed race marriage back in the 50s and 60s.

Unfortunately, the people whom the movie may have "helped" to see the light, wouldn't go see the movie in the first place.

And Dano, dear, you make it sound like 30 is some ancient age. I'm in my late 40s and no one I know voted for Prop. 8. Although I'm sure there are plenty of my contemporaries who did vote for Prop 8, please remember that most of us who came of age in the 60s and 70s, especially those who grew up around San Francisco, are a lot more liberal in our thinking and more inclusive that you seem to believe. But I do agree that as we move along in time, gay marriage will eventually become legal and future generations will wonder what the fuss was about. But you "youngsters" will need to teach your children to embrace equality. I've already done my part and raised one of you right...soon it will be up to you.

Refusing to recognize gay marriage is not a limit on anyone. Homosexuals are free to live together, have sex, raise children, and make contractual commitments to one another. What they are seeking to do is force society to recognize it as equal to heterosexual marriage and celebrate it as such.

The majority of Americans do not wish to afford it that recognition, and public approval is not a human right. It is same-sex marriage advocates who are trying to impose their morality on an unwilling society.

You cannot simultaneously argue that there are no binding moral absolutes AND that there is an absolute moral imperative to approve of gay marriage. It is self-contradictory.

Finally, slavery was killed by Christians like William Wilberforce, Sojourner Truth, and the Quakers, and Republicans like Abraham Lincoln, over the objections of Democrats. It is obscene to compare that barbaric practice to refusing to give someone a marriage license.

"Refusing to recognize gay marriage is not a limit on anyone. Homosexuals are free to live together, have sex, raise children, and make contractual commitments to one another."

Not true. There are still anti-sodomy laws on the books in some states. I'm sure you've heard of "Don't ask don't tell", which essentially means gay people can't hold one of the most honored and important jobs in our nation. And I believe it's also still illeagle for gays to adopt in Arkansas and Florida. Do you get the point? These laws stem from discrimination, that's it.
Wake up.

How exactly does the fact that Harvey Milk was murdered make an argument in favor of gay marriage?

This indicates the shoddy reasoning and naked appeal to emotion that characterizes the gay "rights" movement.

Tom F: Although your approval would be nice, I assure you, it was not what the opponents of Prop 8 were seeking. Of course, the gay community has always strived for acceptance, what minority hasn't, but in opposing Prop 8 they were not trying to force an "absolute moral imperative to approve of gay marriage" upon all of California. That would have been an unrealistic goal, it would have wasted valuable time and resources, and it would have been in direct opposition to everything the No on 8 campaign stood for.
It was not about approval; it was not about gay rights. It was about human rights.
The United States Constitution proclaims that all people are created equal, and should be treated equally under the law. It is this idea, that all people are equal DESPITE the differences in religion, race, sexual preference, etc. that may divide us, that drove the No on 8 campaign.
They were not seeking your approval, sir, they were (and still are) seeking equality under the law. Equality that is assured to them by the highest piece of legislation our country has to offer. It may seem like a moral or religious issue to you, but since our government oversees the distribution of marriage licenses it is not a moral issue, it is a legal issue, and in this country it is illegal to give a certain group of people legal rights, but deny them to another group because you hold a different set of beliefs.
The Constitution gives you the right to your beliefs, sir, and those who opposed Prop 8 understand and respect that, but it also gives us the right to ours. That is the beauty of this "free" country of ours. We can both hold these fundamentally opposing points of view, but the law of the land still sees us as equal human beings. Or it should. The Constitution, the legal foundation our country is built on, says it should.
Unfortunately, right now it is not treating me as your equal. The law allows you the right to marry the person you love, whereas that is a right denied to me, simply because I hold a different set of beliefs. That is what No on 8 was about. We did not want you to approve of us. We are realistic. We know that many people do not and may not ever approve of the life we live, as much as we would like them to. What we were fighting for was something different. We were fighting for the equality that is assured us as citizens of the United States of America, and forgive me for saying so, but that has nothing to do with whether or not you morally approve of us.

To demand a "right" is to impose a moral imperative, by definition. The term "right" is a moral absolute! Thus, to simultaneously say that a particular piece of legislation both denies your rights and is wrong because it imposes morality on you is incoherent. Therefore it is reasonable, when a person demands something as a "right", to ask if it is moral. Otherwise rights are just a power struggle with no actual meaning.

The law can and does restrict whom a person may marry, for example close relatives, polygamy, or "green card" marriages. In the West, you cannot force an unwilling woman to marry. I am not arguing that gay marriage will necessarily lead to those things being legalized, but I challenge the notion that you can marry any person of your choosing.

As to miscegenation laws, they were wrong because they imposed an irrelevant standard on marriage, that of race. Historically, with very few exceptions, gender has been an intrinsic part of marriage.

I respect those who disagree with me, but clearly you can see that a movie, no matter how well made and touching, will not shake a person's core beliefs.

yeah. I to think when the 30 generations die off. all hell won't hit the fan. but i think some people are just waiting. for the white guy with "GREY" hair to did off.

The question really is whether people who are against gay marriage and gay equal rights, will go see the movie. I don't think so. So, why should Milk have been able to change their opinion on a grand scale?

Thanks, Tom F, politesse oblige. Chris, I do hope that Milk at least causes some reconsideration that otherwise might not be the case, maybe not with the firmly entrenched but with the wobblies and those who aren't aware of what happened back then, what was possible, and what remains possible.

Am I the only one that realizes that if a group of people become a protected class based on a characteristic that can neither be proven or unproven we nullify the purpose of protected class. Think about it, homosexuality knows no bounds, you can be gay and be white, black, male, female, and from any part of the world. Essentially everybody in the world would be a protected class, which means nobody would be protected anymore. What would stop anybody from claiming they are gay if something did not go their way and they wanted to enact revenge on somebody through the law claiming discrimination? You can't prove they are not gay any more then you can prove they are. In the words of Syndrome from The Incredibles, "When everyone is special, then no one will be."

No, Rick, you're the only one who's muddied the waters by generalizing this into a debate about "protected class", thereby ignoring the points of this thread and Tapley's initial commentary: 1) "Milk"'s role in/ability to influence history 2) specifically regarding Prop 8/the right of two people, regardless of gender, to obtain a marriage license in California. Twisting this into a review of a much broader topic covering relevant but also peripheral issues such as laws prohibiting discrimination in the workplace based on sexual orientation (which are already on the books in California and 16 other states plus D.C., and in over 180 U.S. cities and counties) subsumes/obfuscates and is singularly unhelpful. Inductive reasoning is sometimes warranted and useful; this is not one of those instances.

WTF

OK, you just went from an elegant rebuttal to a "straw-man" argument. I did not say that people needed government approval to enter into relationships, I said that for centuries government has restricted whom it recognize as "married".

Legal marriage IS governmental approval, by definition, and as such is restricted by public interest, even if that public interest is at times misguided (ie miscegenation laws).

Race is not nearly as big a factor in a sexual relationship as gender. If you give most people a choice of dating outside their race or dating the gender to which they are not attracted, I suspect the vast majority would pick miscegenation. Soldiers generally have sex with foreign nationals before they have sex with their same-sex comrades.

BTW, I am a bit of a "wordie" and I love the sound of the word "miscegenation".

Thanks, Rick, I see your point regarding the difficulty of homosexuality as classification in the broader sense, though that hasn't so far created much difficulty in workplace discrimination legislation, etc. Tom F, I think you might have been referring to Damon's post? Daly, you are absolutely right about the fact that we have enough stupidity to put up with already...wasn't sure whether to laugh at the obvious inflammatory intent of your commentary or to take it seriously, in which case, a) you're off base about biology, look at any recent study about the incidence of homosexuality across the animal kingdom; b) read any recent treatise by the mental health community, and you'll find that they're more inclined to categorize bigots and clods as being less than sane and that homosexuality has not been categorized as a mental disorder for a long while. I suspect that you'd classify as perversion anything that doesn't involve a relationship solely between a married man and woman of the same religious denomination, age, skin color, nationality, town origin and klan, with the sex to be practiced only during the hours of 9 PM to midnight in total silence under the covers in their bedroom in the missionary position with the single purpose of procreation. Homosexuals don't want to live in a straight society, they want to live in an inclusive society that doesn't use epithets to justify tunnel vision. They're even willing to include the rationally absent, the culturally deficient, and the essentially moronic.

the more the marrier

Barack Hussein Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States on Jan. 20, 2009. http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/johnwoo/gGx5H2 The son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas, he is the first African-American to ascend to the highest office in the land. He is also the first new president since terrorists attacked http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/johnwoo/gGx5Ht New York and Washington on, the first t