Hugo Schwyzer

Yesterday afternoon, I gave my last exam of the year; my History 24F (Introduction to Lesbian and Gay American History) class drew the lucky (or unlucky) slot of being my “final final”. After the test was done, I went with those students who were able to join us for an early evening showing of “Milk” at a nearby theater. They’ve been a particularly wonderful group this term, and I wanted to take in this important film as a class. (Thanks are due to Laemmle theaters, for selling me discount group tickets, and to Stephanie and Taylor, two of my students who work there.)

If I hadn’t wanted to see it for the first time with my GLBTQ class, I would surely have gone to see “Milk” as soon as I could have; I waited impatiently for last night, knowing that it would be so much better to take it in in the company of so many young people whom I love and admire. I was not disappointed.

Much has already been written about the film, and about Sean Penn’s magnificent portrayal of Harvey Milk. The supporting cast — especially Emile Hirsch, Alison Pill, and James Brolin — is superb, with nearly every actor bearing an uncanny resemblance to his or her real-life counterpart. And though I had shuddered when I heard that Gus Van Sant was directing this film, as I normally don’t enjoy his style, I loved this movie. Just as another director I don’t like much, Spike Lee, was able to get out of his own way and produce the brilliant and near-perfect “X”, so too Van Sant never gave us the sense that we were supposed to sit back and watch his genius at work. He gave us a wonderful, deeply moving, timely and immensely inspiring film.

Let me say, of course, that everyone who has not seen “The Times of Harvey Milk”, the 1984 Oscar-winning documentary about Harvey, ought to see that. Van Sant clearly drew inspiration from that film (and some archival footage as well), and it helped strengthen the picture. I’ve shown “The Times of Harvey Milk” to many classes over the years, and could probably recite most of the film by heart. (Now that I think about it, there are perhaps no other films ever made — documentary or otherwise — I’ve seen as often!)

Like a great many people, I feel as if I have a personal stake in the story of Harvey Milk. I was eleven years old, and in the sixth grade at Carmel Middle School, when he and George Moscone were assassinated. I had heard of Moscone; my family, living on the Monterey Peninsula, had many connections to what all my life we have called simply “the City.” I only vaguely knew who Harvey was; I was an unusually politically aware eleven year-old, however, and had done some precinct walking against Proposition 6. (As the movie shows, Prop. 6 was the measure that was defeated in November 1978 that would have banned gays and lesbians from serving as teachers). Harvey had led the fight against Prop 6, and as a result, I knew his name, but somehow hadn’t grasped that he was a San Francisco Supervisor.

I learned about the shootings at lunch time from one of the cafeteria supervisors who was listening to an AM radio. After lunch, I had an English class with Mrs. Moro. We were reading “Z for Zechariah”, but we didn’t discuss the book that day. Mrs. Moro turned on her own radio, and we sat and listened to the terrible story as it unfolded on that sunny, cool, Thanksgiving-week afternoon. I was only a one year-old when MLK and RFK were assassinated. The Milk/Moscone murders were, in a very real sense, my first experience of the madness and violence of the adult world. Just days earlier, we had learned about the People’s Temple massacre — but I connected that in my preteen mind to the South American jungle. I knew where San Francisco city hall was, having visited that most beautiful of California public buildings for the very first time only a few months earlier. Thus, these killings seemed much closer to home, and much more personal.

I thought of my eleven year-old self last night, as I sat in the theater with students who, for the most part, would not be born until a decade after the 1978 shootings. I thought of how I had been teased and called a “fag” so often, not least because I had sported a “No on 6″ bumper sticker on one of my PeaChee folders at school. And I thought of what an extraordinary privilege it was to be one of the very first professors in the country to offer a course on Gay and Lesbian History to community college students. (At the time I developed the course eight years ago, only City College of San Francisco among the JCs had a class already in place.) I teared up at that thought as the opening title sequence began, and stayed on the verge of tears throughout the movie. (Those who know the story very well will understand that the moment that I cried the hardest was not when I saw the assassination, or the funeral, or the Prop 6 triumph — but when I saw the great teacher and politican Tom Ammiano in a cameo, reprising something he had done as a much younger man.)

Though some headed home, a hardy dozen or so of us went out for Mexican food last night after the movie. I sat and talked with these teen and twenty-somethings; though we chatted about parents and romances and finances and grades, many also talked about what they had done and were still doing to fight Prop. 8. High on emotion from the film and the relief of being done with finals, there were some teary moments. (Margaritas may have contributed to that intensity and I didn’t bother to check IDs to see who was of age for drinking.) I made a brief and inarticulate toast to Harvey’s memory, to my students, and to the larger movement of which we are all, in some very real sense, a part.

When I have children, I will of course love them and support them wherever they find themselves on the sexual spectrum. But I will also make sure that they grow up aware of this most recent and most contentious of civil rights struggles. It is good and right that they learn the names of Rosa Parks and Dr. King and Malcolm X and Cesar Chavez; it is good and right that they learn of Harriet Tubman and Susan B. Anthony and Fannie Lou Hamer. But they will also learn of Harry Hay and Del Martin, James Baldwin and Franklin Kameny, Barbara Gittings and Harvey Milk. God willing, they will learn those names in whatever school they attend. But should their private or public education fail them in this regard, they will damn well learn those names — and the stories behind those names — from their daddy.

Until my children are here and ready to learn — and even after they come — I’l be doing my best to teach those too-easily obscured stories to as many young people as possible. Films like “Milk”, in their power and their spectacle, make the job of telling these stories so much easier.