St. Harvey Milk vs. the movie image of "Milk"

"What is a saint? A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love. Contact with this energy results in the exercise of a kind of balance in the chaos of existence. A saint does not dissolve the chaos; if he did the world would have changed long ago. ...It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love" - L. Cohen, Beautiful Losers (1966)

Go see "Milk!" Gus Van Sant captures the Castro of the 70's without a false note. Sean Penn has Harvey down to his walk and the inflection of his voice. It is an amazing performance. 30 years after his assassination, the huge losses to HIV/AIDS, the gradual acceptance of gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender men and women, Harvey is not remembered widely, at least outside the older gay community. With the passage of Proposition 8 in California and the ripping away of fundamental rights for all gay and lesbian people, "Milk" comes at just the right time.

There was no widespread protest when Arnold vetoed a bill that would have made May 22 "Harvey Milk Day" in California. For what reason? To bow to the conservative religious force that pushed Prop 8 on us? To cultivate the hatred and prejudice that fosters political murder in another generation? I don't know if we needed a martyr, but we certainly do not need another.

I have a great deal of hope that the younger generation rejects the prejudice of their parents by a huge majority. Even with people living longer, we are probably only a decade away from full legal equality. And I have to admit that I still have no answer to that much more personal, catholic question that I asked myself and continue to ask myself: were these murders, and particularly the assassination of the first openly gay supervisor, a necessary step towards freedom? Harvey was really just an ordinary guy. In many ways, at least to an outside observer, in the Castro in the 70's, he did not seem balanced if I am to apply Leonard's definition of a saint. He actually seemed kind of driven.

So to give his image more balance, I found another image that might tarnish any weird sexless idea of sanctity. I don't think it took most people more than 15 seconds around Harvey to realize that he was a very sexual guy. He joked that as a political figure -- when everyone began to notice his every move -- he wouldn't allow himself the same freedoms that most of us in the Castro grabbed and indulged.

He laughed at his higher calling. I had only been released from my religious vow of celibacy and though I laughed along with him, actually I understood him perfectly. And to return to Harvey's sainthood, he might have objected to on cultural grounds. He was, after all, a Jew. But if his image as a saint helped any gay man or woman win an election, he would have loved it, especially if he or she won big and was a Democrat. So St. Harvey has my vote and "Milk" gets the Academy award for "Best Picture." "You can't know that you're part of a revolution when you're in the middle of it happening."

-- An estimed Zen teacher

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