When Sean Penn won the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of slain San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk two weeks ago, he used his acceptance speech to rail against supporters of California’s Proposition 8, which last November repealed a State Supreme Court ruling extending marriage rights to same-sex couples.

Penn’s confrontational tone was in keeping with his prickly public persona, but it was also in line with his character’s real-life activism. Milk was one of the first openly gay elected officials in the United States, and the fact that he was openly gay defined his policies and goals.

“Milk,” the movie for which Penn won the Oscar, works better as political history than it does as biography. Harvey Milk’s long-term goal was to help build a society in which homosexuals participated fully without having to hide or deny their sexual preferences. But because he understood that many people abhorred those sexual preferences, he knew such a society could not be built on persuasion. He would have to force the issue through political action, just as the civil-rights movement won equality for blacks.

There was one stark difference, however. Black people couldn’t hide their blackness, while gays could hide their homosexuality. The only way Milk could accomplish his long-term goal was to urge his fellow homosexuals to come out and acknowledge their same-sex preferences to their families, friends and communities. He did this by presenting himself, often humorously, as a militant sodomite (“My fellow degenerates!”); in other words, someone who was going to live his life as he pleased.

The fact that Proposition 8 passed 30 years after Milk’s assassination means that his goal has not been accomplished, but his confrontational methodology has become the standard for gay activism. In the process, gays have become culturally, if not necessarily socially, mainstreamed in the U.S. In movie terms, that development is proved not so much by the Oscars for “Milk,” but rather by the box office success of the crude adolescent comedy “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry,” in which gay stereotypes and jokes are thrown back at antigay attitudes. “This is America,” says the main character, played by Adam Sandler. “You should have the right to put anything you want up your ass.” It’s something Harvey Milk could have said, and probably did.

It will be interesting to see the reaction to “Milk” when it opens here in April. There have been a few gay office- holders at the local level in Japan, but political action for homosexual interests is virtually nonexistent, mainly because there are no laws that explicitly proscribe homoerotic activity or deny rights to individuals who are openly gay. On the other hand, social pressure against coming out remains strong.

The media reinforces this situation by boosting TV personalities who trade in gay stereotypes without ever actually mentioning gay sexuality. It’s the whole point of the popular Nihon TV variety show “Oneemans,” where homosexuality really is the love that dare not speak its name. Last fall, NHK presented a two-part discussion about LGBT (Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender) on “Heart Talk,” a show that addresses social issues from a perspective of sensitivity. Though the program drew the derision of Shincho magazine, which wondered if LGBT was really a proper topic for a public broadcaster, it received a positive reaction from many viewers, and NHK aired a followup last month. Most of the discussion was about the difficulty of coming out to friends and family, and how important it was for LGBT people to receive support from parents. There was a profile of a Sapporo support group for parents of LGBT, one of whom appeared in the studio with his mother.

The show was basically an appeal for understanding, filled with testimonials from LGBT people about their loneliness and inability to function normally in a society that won’t acknowledge their situation. It was a passive appeal. The LGBT people who spoke out are waiting for society to change. One participant said LGBT should come out only when they were in a positive frame of mind, since doing so out of anger or frustration might create negative feelings. The advice was mostly about being respectful of other people’s — i.e., straight people’s — feelings. Even the example of the lesbian couple who made a point of not hiding their relationship from the neighbors was presented cautiously. The two women would walk through the streets hand-in-hand greeting everyone they met, and after a year or so people accepted them. However, on TV their faces were blurred out, as were many of the other LGBT participants’. They were not scared for themselves; they just didn’t want to take the chance of making friends and family uncomfortable.

The LGBT participants who did not opt for masking had more than a personal stake in the matter: former Osaka prefectural assemblyperson Kanako Otsuji, Setagaya Ward assemblyperson Aya Kamikawa, psychologist Toshiaki Hirata and some LGBT organization representatives. Hirata explained that the government’s new antisuicide measures do not take into consideration LGBT-related suicides, but that was as far as the discussion went into public policy. It was not the purpose of the program.

The purpose was to show how LGBT people feel, and it seemed clear that the main obstacles they need to overcome in order to live their lives freely are society’s fundamental ignorance and their own fears. In that regard, the program’s blurred-out faces and polite deference to straight sensibilities can only be considered counterproductive.

 See Gay rights in Japan blurred on TV

The Japan Times

No one should be surprised that President-elect Barack Obama would choose self-promoting Pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inaugural. Warren has been hustling for years to make himself the “new Billy Graham” — seeking to fill the vacating role of spiritual adviser to presidents, be they born-again Republicans or born-right-the-first-time Democrats.

Obama, always on the watch for ways to broaden his base of support, has been developing a relationship with Warren for many years, as he has with other fundamentalist preachers who try to put a smile on their intolerance.

Back in December 2006, when he was merely a senator with unannounced presidential ambitions, Obama delivered a smart, sensitive address at Warren’s “2006 Global Summit on AIDS and the Church,” a high-profile event on the pastor’s Saddleback Church campus in Lake Forest, Calif.

Twenty months later, as the soon-to-be Democratic presidential nominee, Obama went back to Saddleback for an unfortunate joint appearance with Republican John McCain — the last major misstep of the senator’s bid for the nation’s top job.

Past is prologue, and Obama’s dalliances with Warren, for better or worse, always pointed to the placement of this particular pastor on the inaugural stage.

What will be significant about Warren’s remarks, however, is that they will be so insignificant.

Warren’s invocation will be forgotten five minutes after it is finished.

Indeed, the only “news” that will come from his appearance at the inaugural is the controversy surrounding it — and the protests that controversy may spark.

Far more significant, and encouraging, than his off-putting selection of Warren to deliver the invocation is Obama’s choice of a genuine spiritual progressive to deliver the benediction.

It is the Rev. Joseph E. Lowery who will present the far more uplifting and meaningful religious message on Inauguration Day. And in his appealing selection of the 87-year-old Lowery, Obama has made a choice that is far more adventurous — even, dare we say, radical — than his unappealing designation of Warren.

Lowery was the longtime president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which he co-founded in 1957, before Obama was born, with the Revs. Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph David Abernathy and Fred Shuttlesworth. An essential player in the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, Lowery was sent by King to deliver the demands of the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery march to Alabama’s segregationist governor, George Wallace, and it was to Lowery that Wallace apologized three decades later.

Long after King and most of the other founding fathers of the civil rights movement had been buried, Lowery carried on the struggle. He led the 1982 drive to extend the federal Voting Rights Act. In 2005, when it came time to renew the act once more, Lowery famously cornered Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at a memorial service for Rosa Parks to ask for maintaining voting rights protections. Why did Lowery choose so somber a setting to make his appeal to the most prominent African-American member of President Bush’s Cabinet? “Because I knew she could not move,” he explained.

 See Lowery’s Preaching, Not Warren’s, Will Illuminate Inaugural Day The Nation.

Gay Asian Pacific Alliance (GAPA) held their 20th anniversary celebration, “Urban Jungle,” at the SF Zoo on Dec. 6, featuring keynote speaker, comic actress Margaret Cho, and some lively singing and dancing. Tita Aida emceed the awards banquet and introduced F.U.S.I.O.N. (Funky Unique Styles In One Nation); GAPA Dance Company performing “Korean Fushion” to Madonna’s Music” and “Fan Dance” to “Please Don’t Stop the Music;” and the GAPA Men’s Chorus singing “My Romance” and several other songs.

“There are many civil rights milestones to be reflected upon,” said Co-chair Francis Tsang. “Forty years ago, Martin Luther King changed history with the Civil Rights Movement; thirty years ago, Harvey Milk changed history with the Gay Rights Movement; and twenty years ago, GAPA changed history for the Asian and Gay Community.” He said the purpose of establishing GAPA was “empowering the Asian and LGBT community, breaking stereotypes and fighting against the status quo, so that we can live our lives out loud and proud.” Co-chair Raphael Buencamino said, “In a time when HIV was devastating our communities, and a time when same-sex marriage was a fantasy, and when gay API people were turned away at bars and clubs, GAPA fought to bring our community out of the shadows to stand up and fight all those forces against us.” He added, “GAPA continues to lead the fight against HIV, especially among the API community at large. Now is the time to fight in courts, stand up, protest, and do what we can to bring change that we have dreamed of.”

 See Margaret Cho was in a Zoo for GAPA
San Francisco Bay Times, CA