I'm Here To Recruit You

Mike Alvear over at Urge & Merge has written yet another thought provoking piece on the gay rights movement. In it (read it here) he talks about New York Governor David Patterson being the new Harvey Milk, or as Mike puts it in this new age, Harvey Milk 2.0.

You see, Patterson does not talk around the issue of equality for gay Americans; he talks to it, and, for lack of a better term, in a straightforward manner. He is not mincing words and hemming and hawing, placating the gay community with polite talk about civil unions and baby steps and activist judges and the will of the people.

David Patterson puts it quite simply:

We have all known the wrath of discrimination.

We have all felt the pain and the insult of hatred.

This is why we are all standing here today.

We stand to tell the world that we want equality for everyone

Powerful words indeed, but Mike Alvear raises another issue which I found oddly interesting. He asks why is it that it's a straight man fighting so eloquently for gay equality--I believe I'll stop calling them gay rights, because it's equality I'm after, and when we use the word rights, it gets twisted into special rights. It equality, pure and simple.

So why a straight man, or straight men: Gavin Newsome, anyone? Where is our Martin Luther King now that Harvey is gone? Where is Harvey Milk in our struggle today? See, we can quote Harvey and talk about what Harvey did and said, and what he might say and do if he were here today, but where is the Harvey Milk of 2009?

I think I've found him; and her. It's me. A gay man living openly in South Carolina. It's you, living all over the United States, in every big city and small town, farm and condo. It's every gay man and gay woman out there who believes they have had enough of being less than, of being called every foul name in the book, of being taunted and bullied and persecuted and fired and evicted and beaten and murdered, simply because we're gay. It's every straight man and straight woman who think that enough is enough; enough of treating people as though they don't exist; enough of acting like what the gay community asks for, what the gay community deserves, will somehow lessen their own marriages, families, churches, schools.

I'm Harvey Milk. And so are you.

Let's try and make him proud.

Let's not go quietly.

Let's not wait.

Let's not ask politely for equality.

Let's demand to be treated as an equal American.

As he once said, again and again:

My name is Harvey Milk and I'm here to recruit you.