Film, Politics
An Oscars moment
22 February 2009
Among the whole Academy Awards hullabaloo, there were a handful of very moving moments. I just want to write about one, even though it pertains to a movie I haven’t even seen. Major kudos to Dustin Lance Black for winning an Oscar for the screenplay of Milk — and also kudos for having the guts once upon a time to move on with his life, to move on from Mormonism to something that worked for him.
From his acceptance speech: “When I was 13 years old, my beautiful mother and my father moved me from a conservative Mormon home in San Antonio, Texas, to California, and I heard the story of Harvey Milk. And it gave me hope. It gave me the hope to live my life. It gave me the hope that one day I could live my life openly as who I am and that maybe even I could fall in love and one day get married.”
Later, Sean Penn spoke of the hateful picketers outside the Oscars whose grandchildren will be ashamed of them. While I suppose this is largely true of anybody who would spend time picketing today, a lot of the people I know who are opposed to gay marriage oppose it not out of hate, but out of fear and a misguided sense of duty to God. An important distinction that their grandchildren will cling to.