Gay Rights: Milk (2008)

The 2008 film, Milk, depicts the life and political career of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay individual to be elected public office in California. Harvey Milk moves to San Fransisco and opens up a photography shop. The film portrays both Harvey’s will to represent the community and the personal discrimination he is faced with as a result of his sexual orientation. Instead of being exclusively single issue based, Harvey Milk aims to serve all the constituents of society regardless on their backgrounds, specifically sexual orientation. The overall questions to consider is how does an issue like gay rights affect society and how does society affect the advocators of gay rights?
In the article, ” The Polls-Trends in the United States” (2009) by Chelsea Schaefer and Greg Shaw, the authors present survey data that confirms tolerance increases towards traditionally unpopular groups. But is tolerance acceptance? And how can “tolerance” be just as offensive to minority groups? Until recently, blacks were openly  discriminated against and gays remain the “black sheep” of society. Women are underprivileged in far parts of the world and virtually every country on the globe has a minority group that is in some way underrepresented or discriminated against. Intolerance may just be a human gene, highly unfortunate but possible. Schaefer and Shaw claim that growing tolerance exists but it may be that the groups discriminated against are changing. Though a growing tolerance towards gays exists, are they really accepted? More importantly, do they feel accepted?

)Harvey Milk began his political activism in San Fransisco, decades later groups like Facebook even took part in gay pride events in the city. It shows how times have changed)

The article, “Minority Group Interests and Political Representation: Gay Elected Officials in the Policy Process” by Haider-Markel, Mark Joslyn, and Chad Kniss, explains that minority groups like gays, can be represented by sympathetic officials who benefit particular groups in the policy process. The authors claim that gays, for example, can be represented by non-gay officials who identify with them. However, are they representing them to the fullest extent? In the film,Milk,Harvey Milk attempts to represent the gay community and is directly part of it. The question to ponder is whether or not officials that aren’t directly affiliated with a particular minority group can accurately represent them?