Hollywood pays tribute to a gay hero. But 30 years on his legacy ...

Friday is gay wedding day at San Francisco City Hall, one of those examples of American monumental architecture for which the word 'grandiose' might have been invented. One by one, the couples make their way past the security guards and metal detectors, through the vast rotunda and up the marble staircase to a smaller, domed area where most of the ceremonies take place.

Like all couples on their big day, they are beaming, locking eyes as they pledge to share a lifetime together. But they are also in a hurry. 'We'd been thinking about this step very seriously for a long time,' says one tall, dark-haired woman - a college professor who moved with her partner to San Francisco from Kentucky. 'But we wanted to make sure we could get married before election day.'

In California, election day - a week on Tuesday - will not just decide whether Barack Obama or John McCain wins the White House. In an echo of the culture wars that have dominated US politics for the past four decades, a separate ballot initiative - opposed by Obama with the caveat that he personally favours only gay 'civil unions', but endorsed by McCain - could shut the door on same-sex weddings in the city that first sanctioned them four years ago.

Supporters of the ballot, known as 'Proposition Eight', call it the 'Marriage Protection Act'. If passed, it would undo the latest twist in a long-running battle over gay marriages - the California Supreme Court's recent ruling that barring such ceremonies violates the state constitution's equal rights provisions - by amending the basic law to define marriage in California as valid 'only between a man and a woman'.

In an extraordinary example of life imitating art, the nail-biting conclusion to the campaign over 'Prop 8' coincides with the launch of one of the most eagerly awaited movies of the year. It is a biopic starring Oscar-winning actor Sean Penn as the San Francisco city supervisor who, most probably more than anyone else, was responsible for the seismic political changes that allowed gay couples to marry.

His name was Harvey Milk. Three decades ago, his capture of a seat on the Board of Supervisors made him the first openly gay person to win elected city office in America. He served for just 11 months and the political high point of his time in office was to lead the battle to defeat another ballot proposition - Proposition Six of 1978 - that would have led to the sacking of all openly gay teachers in California's state schools.

While few of the dozens of couples celebrating their City Hall weddings seem to notice, they are reciting their vows a dozen paces from a recently installed bronze bust of Milk - and only a few steps farther from the spot where, on 27 November, 1978, he and the city's then mayor, George Moscone, were gunned down and killed by an embittered conservative council rival.

'Harvey Bernard Milk, 1930-1978', the inscription reads. Harvey is smiling - partly, his friends like to think, from the infectious joy he took in shaking up a political establishment where old money, old interests and old prejudices were resisting the tide of change; partly at seeing how far the changes he championed have since taken root; and partly, too, in wonder at the imminent prospect of becoming not just a San Francisco gay icon but a fully fledged member of America's national political pantheon.

 

Hollywood pays tribute to a gay hero. But 30 years on his legacy ...
guardian.co.uk, UK