p e n g u i n d e v i l

Yes, I do occasionally watch movies still! Case in point? Tonight we watched The Times of Harvey Milk. A documentary about Harvey Milk, the gay rights movement of the 1970’s, his successful candidacy for San Francisco city council (becoming they say, the first openly gay male elected official in the United States) and the sudden and tragic end to that experience. The movie is pretty interesting, lots of interviews with people who knew him and were well familiar with the struggles that gays and other minorities faced in the city. It seems to really have been about the time that San Francisco was becoming a famous magnet for gay population, which elicited a mixed response from the population. The movie sort of sums up the quickly expanding gay scene in San Francisco and how Milk’s political activism made him a sort of lightening rod for it. The death of Milk and Mayor Moscone at the hands of former councilman Dan White was a terrible event for San Fransisco, coming right on the heels of the Jonestown Massacre. A lot of the population became rather mournful about things, that changed after White was sentenced! The light punishment put upon him, the success of his famous Twinkie defense and his “sad and touching” confession led a great deal of rightful anger from the community.

Thinking about the verdict reminds one that “the law” is set up to protect and serve society, not to protect and serve people. So someone like White, a middle-class white male seeking to clean up what he thought were people who were dangerous to the city… while he may have violated the letter of the law, I’m sure that there were many who thought that his actions where within the spirit of the law.

Its hard to believe that all this sort of stuff was a mere thirty years ago. Heck, he won his successful bid for office a mere three months after my first trip to San Fransisco!