Read the essay below.

When Others Are Oppressed

There he was, Sean Penn, masterfully playing Harvey Milk in the current and timely film, MILK. I sat there for two hours completely absorbed, humored, impassioned, and ultimately, deeply saddened and grieved. I couldn’t help but to think about a line from a Greg Brown song: “why does good change take so long?” Why do we, as human beings, take so much joy in seeing others oppressed, others suffer?

MILK is a movie about Harvey Milk, California’s first openly gay supervisor who was assassinated by fellow supervisor, Dan White. It unfolds as an intriguing, emotionally provoking, yet terrifying, depiction of what fear can do. One can replace the struggle of the gay community with the struggle of any group that has been oppressed. I contemplated the advancement we could make as human sojourners if we stood together, if we recognized that their fight IS our fight, thus, removing the silly categories of group that limit us.

I thought about the suicides of Bill B. and the thousands of gay, lesbian, and transgender youth and adults who were hated, tortured, teased, ostracized, and/or judged by a world built out of sands of fear. I thought about parents who reject their children because they believe being gay is a choice. I thought about Jesus and how it would grieve him to see his children suffer at the hands of those who claim to know him. I thought about myself, and how my struggle as a black, heterosexual male is defeated if I can’t speak out and up for my brothers and sisters who are gay, Hispanic/Latino, Asians, women, transgender, physically challenged, elderly, Muslim, Jewish, raped, abused, hungry, or voiceless. Is not my cause their cause? Can any of us truly be free when others are oppressed?

I thought about California’s Proposition 8. I thought about how 70% of the African-American vote in California voted to uphold Proposition 8, overturning legalized, gay marriages. I thought about the forward steps in the civil rights movement when Barack Obama was elected, and then I thought about the stumble backwards on that same day. How could the African-American community, the same community who wept, wailed and bled for their equal existence to be acknowledged by the masses, be the identical group who would support a proposition that, in short, sealed the shackles of tyranny for another group? How could this possibly be?

I thought about the tears Harvey Milk, had he not been assassinated, would be weeping on this past election day. I thought about my family and loved ones who are gay/lesbian/transgender. I thought about shackles and yellow stars and closets. I thought about bombs falling and government lists and associations and accusations. I thought about my daughter, and the world we are passing on to her. And I cried. And I thought about my tears, and how I weep for the gay community, and how I stand with them because my struggle is their struggle. And their struggle is my struggle. “We are all in this together. We are all in this alone.” – Pierce Pettis

“And you’ve got to elect gay people, so that child and the thousands and thousands like that child know that there’s hope for a better world; there’s hope for a better tomorrow. Without hope, not only gays, but those blacks, those Asians, the disabled, the seniors, the Us’s . . . without hope, the Us’s give up. I know you cannot live on hope alone, but without it, life is not worth living. You, you, and you got to give them hope.” – Harvey Milk