In my quest to see all the Oscar-nominated Best Films of 2008 prior to the nominations being announced next year, using only my well-tuned sense of what constitutes an Oscar-nominee, I went to see “Milk” yesterday, Gus van Sant’s biopic of San Francisco City Supervisor Harvey Milk, a gay activist who was (spoiler alert!) shot and killed by fellow City Supervisor Dan White.
Sean Penn did what he always does – completely disappear into the role and make him a real person, with all our flawed perceptions and amazing insights. More than that, though, Penn’s performance shows a character that always pushed forward, and maintained a positive outlook, no matter what obstacles stood in his way.
The movie, seen through a wanna-be activist’s eyes (mine), also shows how movements were built back in the day. Milk actually tried to get the political support of Dan White – of course, not knowing what White would do in the future, which we now know – by trying to find some common ground. Of course, White’s idea of common ground appeared to be either too radical for Milk to support (something about psychiatric tests for children? I was never really sure), or that was another example of Milk’s flaw, that he never took the time to look into the issue to find some way he could support White’s side. Milk wanted his gay rights proposal to pass the city council with a unanimous vote as a symbolic measure, but when he failed to get White’s support he pressed ahead anyway, then, flush from his victory, approached White again. This time, White had a politically unreasonable request – he wanted Milk to introduce a pay raise for City Supervisors, which Milk didn’t even consider supporting.
Milk fought against a California state initiative, Proposition 6, which would have banned not only gays from teaching in public schools, but would have also gone further to ban anyone who supported gays. The state legislator who lead the drive for that measure is shown in the movie explaining that there were tests of some sort built into the bill. Milk has a meeting with the gay rights leaders in California at that time, and Milk denounces the pamphlets that they are distributing to fight against the measure: the text does not mention the word “gay”, and does not put a human face on the problem, instead taking a “high road” and framing the whole debate in terms of human rights.
Milk urges his friends and followers to come out. His thought was that if more people were aware that someone they knew was gay, they would vote against the bill.
The movie suggests that the reason Prop. 6 lost was because of the courageous approach taken by Harvey Milk and the opposition. Because of the lead time for making movies, the writer and filmmakers had no idea, I’m sure, that the fight in the film would mirror the fight this year in regards to Prop. 8. Sadly, mirror is the right word – thousands of families were torn apart, a right enshrined in the California Constitution taken away because of those who mis-read and mis-understand the stories told by long-dead men, when Prop. 8 passed this year.
As I said, I watched the movie while wearing my activist hat. The struggle for gay rights, which is still in dispute thanks to the misreading of a Bronze Age text by its present-day followers, reminds me of the similarities to the atheist community. We atheists have only begun to collect in groups and to announce our presence to the world at large. On a national level, there is only one elected representative who calls himself a humanist, Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA13), and even Mr. Stark didn’t announce he was a humanist until after he’d been elected. I have no particular insight into Mr. Stark’s personal beliefs, and I mean no disrespect, but to my ears, “humanist” sounds like a cop-out for someone who can’t go the whole distance and call themselves an atheist. And if that is the case, then the reason it’s not a tenable label for an elected official is because of the vast influence that the followers of gods have in our supposedly modern society.
Earlier this year, the Secular Coalition tried to find as many atheist elected officials as they could. They released a survey. From the US President, to Congress, down to the state and local levels, there are over a million men and women elected to office.
The Secular Coalition found five; The afore-mentioned Rep. Stark; Nebraska State Senator Ernie Chambers (I am guessing, since Sen. Chambers was first elected in 1971 and is Nebraska’s longest-serving legislator, that he did not come out as an atheist in his primary campaign); and three at the local level, one in Berkeley, California, one in Franklin, Maine, and one from Arlington, Massachusetts.
Harvey Milk’s idea of making the fight personal by putting a face on what is otherwise an abstract idea is a good one. And the goal of getting more atheists elected into office is also a great route to take. The atheist community is only now beginning to organize and speak as one group. It’s going to be a long fight, but studies show that, as education rises, so does non-belief. Education doesn’t just mean advanced degrees; it can also mean just talking to your neighbor or friend.
Our elected officials are, by and large, experienced and well-educated, in most cases upper middle class or better. And yet there are only five out atheists among them? Far more, I think, are in the closet, put there by fear of oppression by the outspoken religious. And yet, we all share something. Atheists are, by and large, the ones who understand that separating church and state protects the church, too. Atheists are natural allies of people with minority religious traditions.
My youngest nephew is 17, and, like me and his father, an atheist. The night Barack Obama was elected by the people to be the President of the United States of America, its first black president, I asked my nephew if we would live to see an atheist president.
He thought a moment, then said, “I probably will,” then smiled and continued, “but not you, Uncle Brian.”
It’d be nice to prove him wrong – but I suspect he’s right.