by Cleve Jones
For me, the aftermath of Milk was a bit like an exhumation. The new generation dug me up, dusted me off, and wanted to hear my stories of the old days, fighting alongside Harvey Milk, or how we mobilized against AIDS. I started traveling up and down the state and worked closely with the Courage Campaign, a new progressive organization started by Rick Jacobs in Los Angeles.
Many felt a strong desire to go back to the ballot, and controversy soon erupted as the various groups and organizations jostled for leadership roles, media coverage, and funding. There was deep and widespread dissatisfaction with the LGBT establishment, especially Equality California and the Human Rights Campaign, and equally deep divisions about how to move forward. Jacobs and veteran lesbian activist Torie Osborn helped lead Camp Courage, a traveling activist education program created by Mike Bonin, a staffer for gay LA City Council member Bill Rosendahl. I joined their efforts.
But I didn’t want to go back to the ballot box. There’s a scene in Milk where my character complains bitterly of our opponents’ ability to get anything on the ballot just by circulating petitions in churches in “Orange fucking County.” I didn’t want us to spend $60 million for yet another battle that would be neither definitive nor final. At every stop I reminded people that even if Prop. 8 were overturned or repealed we would still be second-class citizens in terms of federal rights, Social Security, and military service in particular.
One day Lance said, “It is time to name what we want: full federal equality.” He was about to find a platform from which to proclaim that message far and wide.
On February 22, Lance and I pulled up at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood for the 81st Academy Awards. Lance’s mother, stepfather, and brothers had flown in a few days earlier. It was crazy to be in a room where almost every face was one that I had seen onscreen.
A few nights before, Carrie Fisher hosted her annual pre-Oscar party at her home in honor of Milk. I arrived late and hungry to see her patio jammed with movie stars and producers. I piled my plate with food at the buffet, then spied an open seat and sat down. I felt someone take the chair to my right and looked up to see that it was Mick Jagger.
I asked him which Rolling Stones album had the cover with the bulging crotch and zipper.
“That was Sticky Fingers, in 1971,” he answered. I told him I was a junior in high school when I saw that cover and I knew for sure I was gay. He laughed.
Paris Hilton walked up and asked me what I did for work. I told her I helped organize underpaid workers in hotels, like those owned by her family.
“That’s so cool,” she said. “Workers are hot.” Then she and Gus got into something that ended abruptly with her announcing loudly, “Bitch, I did a month in County.”
At the Oscars Lance and I had great seats up front, directly behind Sophia Loren. Milk was nominated in eight categories. Sean Penn won Best Actor. Dustin Lance Black won Best Original Screenplay and he was out of his seat so fast he made it to the stage just seconds after Steve Martin and Tina Fey announced his win. He got right to the point:
This was not an easy film to make. First off, I have to thank Cleve Jones and Anne Kronenberg and all the real-life people who shared their stories with me. And Gus Van Sant, Sean Penn, Emile Hirsch, Josh Brolin, James Franco, and our entire cast; my producers Dan Jinks and Bruce Cohen; and everyone at Groundswell and Focus for taking on the telling of this life-saving story.
When I was thirteen years old, my beautiful mother and 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 then maybe I could even fall in love and one day get married.
I want to thank my mom, who has always loved me for who I am even when there was pressure not to. But most of all, if Harvey had not been taken from us thirty years ago, I think he’d want me to say to all of the gay and lesbian kids out there who have been told that they are less than by their churches, by the government, or by their families, that you are beautiful, wonderful creatures of value and that no matter what anyone tells you, God does love you and that very soon, I promise you, you will have equal rights federally, across this great nation of ours. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you, God, for giving us Harvey Milk.
I watched from my seat and could not stop crying.
CHAPTER 36
Meet in the Middle
I MET ROBIN MCGEHEE IN FRESNO, CALIFORNIA, WHEN SHE INVITED ME to Fresno to speak at a Gay-Straight Alliance group for high school kids from California’s Central Valley. I was impressed that these groups even existed in such a conservative and rural part of the state but was skeptical that anyone would show up.
I drove up from Palm Springs by myself and soon found the church where the conference was scheduled to take place. I noticed that the parking lot was empty. I shrugged—just another of many long drives to speak with small crowds. But when I opened the door, a blast of noise greeted me and I saw that the place was packed to the rafters with LGBT boys and girls from all over the Valley—from Redding and Red Bluff to Manteca and Bakersfield. My talk was only an hour long but I stayed all day listening to the mostly Latino young people talk about their struggles and watching them find confidence and courage from each other.
Throughout the day Robin, herself a mother of two, moved through the kids, encouraging them and watching over them with great good humor, modeling for them what gentle leadership looks like. I was very impressed.
A week after the meeting in Fresno, Robin e-mailed me to ask if she could come visit to tell me about her big new idea. She told me if I would agree to meet with her she would drive down to Palm Springs and take me out for a sushi dinner. I love hamachi, so I agreed.
This young woman was something else. Smart, articulate, also beautiful, with long blonde hair and a southern inflection to her voice, she taught at a college in Fresno, where she lived with her partner and their two toddlers. The passage of Proposition 8 had radicalized her and caused real fear for the safety of her own family.
Robin’s idea was “Meet in the Middle,” a rally to overturn Prop. 8, held in the center of the state in a county that had voted 68.7 percent in favor of the measure. I had visited Fresno many times over the years, including a stop in 1989 that had featured an appearance by the local KKK chapter in full hooded glory, riding around in pickup trucks. It was a crazy idea but Robin was irresistible, and I agreed to help her and to speak at the event.
While I was interacting with the new grassroots organizations and networks that were springing up all over the state, Lance and Milk’s Bruce Cohen were having similar conversations with people in Hollywood, people with money. They met a young political consultant named Chad Griffin who came from Arkansas and had worked in the Clinton White House. He was close to liberal activists Rob and Michele Reiner and a range of clients that included the Walmart Foundation. Lance was eager for me to meet Chad, but I had just about had my fill of political consultants and said as much. Lance insisted that Chad had some bold ideas and agreed with us that we needed to turn to the federal courts to challenge Proposition 8 there, not back to the ballot.
Then Bruce Cohen called and said I needed to get down to LA right away to meet with him, Lance, and Chad. Something was up. We met for breakfast at Palihouse on Holloway. They all seemed very nervous and a little giddy. Chad gulped his water glass empty, then his orange juice, then reached over and drank my orange juice as well.
Then Chad delivered the most remarkable piece of news: he had met with Theodore Olson, the lawyer who had represented George W. Bush in the famous Bush v. Gore Supreme Court case that gave Bush the presidency. He had then been appointed United States solicitor general, one of the great legal lions of the ever more conservative Republican Party, a man who had served as Ronald Reagan’s counsel during the Iran-Contra affair. In short, Chad had met with the devil, and it turned out that the devil believed there was a cons
titutional right to marriage equality; and the devil was willing to take the case and challenge Proposition 8 in federal court and go all the way to the Supreme Court. I was stunned, really speechless. Chad asked me what I thought, and all I could say was, “You drank my fucking orange juice.”
Within weeks, Chad, the Reiners, Bruce, and Lance started the American Foundation for Equal Rights. They brought in Ken Mehlman, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, now out of the closet and eager to make amends for the grave damage he helped inflict upon his own people. Jonathan Lewis, son of the chairman of Progressive Insurance, multimillionaire Paul Lewis, also joined them. AFER announced its existence with the headline-grabbing news that David Boies, the famous liberal lawyer who had faced off against Theodore Olson in Bush v. Gore, was joining forces with Olson to fight Proposition 8.
On May 20, longtime activist David Mixner published a call for a national march on Washington in support of marriage equality and an end to the absurd “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy enacted by President Clinton. I’d been hearing from so many young activists who wanted a national march but I had discouraged them, remembering the cost and complexity of previous marches. But Mixner made sense: the Democrats held Congress and the White House—for now—but repealing the Defense of Marriage Act and other efforts for LGBT rights were clearly not a priority for the Democratic leadership, and they said so quite bluntly. I endorsed Mixner’s call for a march and suggested October 11, forty years to the day from the first National March on Washington for Gay and Lesbian Rights, as the date. I also suggested that we march not just for marriage rights but for equal protection under the law, in all matters governed by civil law, in all fifty states. Just one demand, articulated in one sentence: equal justice under law.
The nation’s major LGBT organizations were just about unanimous in condemning the federal court challenge to Proposition 8. I was genuinely baffled by the response and called Evan Wolfson, founder of Freedom to Marry and one of the first, along with conservative author and columnist Andrew Sullivan, to advocate for marriage equality. Both Wolfson and Sullivan saw winning marriage not only as a tangible benefit, but also as a strategy to make gay people more mainstream and acceptable to the larger society.
Wolfson took my call and insisted that the challenge to Prop. 8 was a disaster and that AFER’s strategy was wrong and irresponsible. “It’s not the right time,” he repeated. “We shouldn’t go to the Supreme Court until we’ve already won in thirty states. We need to win some victories first, through popular votes, legislative action, and court decisions. Then, and only then, should we take it to the Supreme Court.”
I listened to this and thought of the thirty-some states that had already enacted constitutional bans against same-sex marriage and asked Wolfson how long he thought it would take.
“Maybe twenty-five or thirty years,” was his response.
I stayed polite, but all I could think was, Fuck that, I want to see it in my lifetime. And the young people I was meeting in the streets and on the campuses certainly weren’t about to wait two decades or more. I was damn sure of that.
During that same month I had a telephone conversation with Congressman Barney Frank. Frank was the author of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) to prohibit discrimination in employment based on sexual orientation. I asked Frank if he would be willing to amend the bill to add protections from discrimination in housing as well.
His response was “No, we don’t need it. Landlords love gay people.” At first I thought he was joking, but he wasn’t. I wondered how often he ventured away from Provincetown and Dupont Circle. Frank also opposed challenging Proposition 8 in federal court.
It was depressing to relay to the young activists that one of the nation’s highest-paid LGBT leaders and the longest-serving gay Member of Congress both thought we were absolutely on the wrong track. But few of the young people had ever heard of either of them and they were neither concerned nor persuaded.
The California State Supreme Court upheld Proposition 8 and a few days later, on May 30, 2009, Robin McGehee’s march on Fresno, “Meet in the Middle,” drew several thousand protesters from all over California. The court’s decision reinforced the growing consensus among the grassroots activists that only federal action would win us unequivocal victory.
I worked hard on my speech for Fresno, reading about its history and the various peoples who had come to live there.
This has been a painful week for supporters of equality. We are angered and deeply disappointed by the ruling of the California State Supreme Court upholding Proposition 8.
But we come here today to Fresno, waving no white flags of surrender but, rather, with feet firmly planted in the rich soil of California’s great Central Valley, to declare our equality.
We come here today with honor and respect for the land and people of this valley, all the many different kinds of people who have worked this soil, raised their families, and built communities:
Descendants of the indigenous tribes and Spanish settlers, and refugees from wars and famine and persecution. Those who walked out of the Dust Bowl from Oklahoma. Those who fled across the southern deserts. Those who were brought here against their will and those who gave willingly everything they had to get here. Those who built the canals and railroad lines. Those who were interned. Chinese and Armenian, Scottish and Japanese, Mexican and Hmong. Catholics, Muslims, Protestants, Jews, and Buddhists. Black and brown and white. All those who have made this valley their home, tilled the fields, tended the orchards, operated the stockyards and processing plants, worked in hospitals, schools, hotels, and office buildings.
And among all of those people, within all of their families, have always existed the people who are known today as gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender.
We stand here today as equals. Equal in our ability to form and sustain loving relationships. Equal in our ability to work. Equal in our ability to parent, adopt, and foster parent. Equal in our ability to defend our country. Equal in our desire to contribute to our neighborhoods and communities. Equal in our eagerness to rebuild our country and save our planet. And equal, most certainly, in the eyes of God.
We love this land and we love this country, even when subjected to harassment, discrimination, and violence at the hands of our countrymen.
We love God, even as we are rejected by our pastors, imams, priests, and rabbis.
And we love democracy, even as the ballot box is used to strip us of our most basic rights.
One of Fresno’s most celebrated sons, the great American writer William Saroyan, once wrote: “I can’t hate for long. It isn’t worth it.”
Let that then be the message that flies out from Fresno this afternoon to America: Don’t hate for long; it isn’t worth it. It isn’t worth it!
CHAPTER 37
National Equality March
BENJAMIN AND I WOKE UP EARLY ON SUNDAY, OCTOBER 11, IN THE Madison Hotel on the corner of 15th and M in Washington, DC. I looked out the window, saw the empty intersection below, and my heart sank.
For the past four months I had crisscrossed the US, speaking on college and university campuses, in churches and synagogues and at street rallies, to build the National Equality March. The criticism had been harsh and nonstop, especially from gay Democratic Party insiders like Andy Tobias and Barney Frank. Frank was especially derisive in mocking the young people who wanted to march. “The only thing you’ll impress is the lawn,” he repeated. According to Frank, demonstrations and marches had no impact on Congress and were a waste of time. But meanwhile, members of his own caucus were slinking off to the hills, terrified by the protests of a new small band of right-wingers called the Tea Party.
On weekends my little house in Palm Springs was full of young people, sitting for hours with their laptops at my dining room table, reaching out through social media to build the march. Robin McGehee had met a young activist in San Francisco named Kip Williams. The two of them soon headed up a sprawling ne
twork of mostly new, mostly young LGBT and allied organizers. A young man named Tanner Efinger practically moved in with me to help me pay my bills, answer correspondence, and schedule my flights. Some veterans of the early movement, like San Diego’s Nicole Murray-Ramirez, also signed on and joined the effort.
The march was opposed by every national LGBT organization in the country. In midsummer, the ten largest LGBT advocacy groups in the US plus the American Civil Liberties Union signed a letter opposing the American Foundation for Equal Rights challenge to California’s Proposition 8 in federal court. Not only did they insist that this was not the time; they also said that the community should focus on repealing the law, and others like it, at the ballot box. This infuriated me, as it constituted a complete abandonment of a fundamental principle to which we had all previously subscribed: the basic human rights of any group of people should never be subjected to a popular vote.
AFER, led by Chad Griffin, with Theodore Olson and David Boies, pushed back hard against the criticism and moved forward. We didn’t yet know it, but on the other side of the country, in New York, a woman named Edie Windsor was coming to the same conclusion.
In September I picked up a bug on a flight and developed a severe respiratory infection. I lay in my bedroom, listening as the young people worked away at my dining table. My cough got so violent that Tanner told me he was frightened he would find me dead one morning.
And now the day was at hand, and several stories below a bare handful of people were gathering where the police had blocked off the street for our assembly area.
Ben pointed. “Look, isn’t that Gilbert?”
Gilbert Baker had sewn a gigantic green and white banner that proclaimed, “EQUALITY ACROSS AMERICA.” It was magnificent, but I wasn’t sure if there would be enough people to even carry it.