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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (June 13, 2008)
JUNE 13, 2008 juSt|OUt.49 Say My Name, Say My Name Harvey Milk, Hillary Clinton and Sam Adams say it loud he room was dark, and shards of light cut ence on its feet in wild display, and if you weren’t across the crowd. The screen onstage screaming you were crying and 1 was crying again, filled with flicking candles, thousands of only by then it was not just for Harvey Milk the them, raised in an almost unison salute, man, but for the moment, too. Is this rare? Is it accompanied by heartbeat symphonic authentic? Looking back now, it certainly seemed strings. People wept on film; people wept to in be rhe both. audience. I wept, too, and then started to sob; 1 had a similar experience about a week later, a stranger offered a Kleenex. The setting was Clinton Street Theater, and the gather ing was a viewing of the seminal 1984 gay documentary The Times of Harvey Milk, closing out the second annual QDoc: Portland Queer Documentary Film Festi val. I’m embarrassed to admit I hadn’t seen the film before, and when the lights went down I had no idea what I was in store for: a highly charged chronicling of recent gay history’s most loved martyr, the “Mayor of Castro Street,” that left me—and that full room of queers and allies—breathless, speech during U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presi less and emotionally wrung dry. dential bid-ending speech June 8, broadcast live It was likely the first time I experienced such from Washington, D.C.’s Building History Mu a heightened communal emotional connection seum. She sounded a hopeful note in her endorse with other sexual minorities—perhaps in my ment of U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, and she called life. I’ll never forget that as the film barreled to out, demographic by demographic, the wonder its astonishing end, the applause began, and built fully varied faces of Americans who voted for her to a seismic wall-rattling ovation, with the audi in the primary. T I was walking down Divi I’ve long won sion with a gay friend from dered if maybe Seattle, reading Clinton’s re the most im marks aloud from NYTimes. portant part of com on my cell phone: “gay pride” is, “women and men, young quite simply, its and old, Latino and Asian,” name (though BY STEPHEN MARC BEAUDOIN J I read with k most Pride fests i n c r e a s - refrain from us ing volume: “African American ing “gay” these days and opt instead for the all- and Caucasian, rich, poor and encompassing “queer”; some, like “Pride North middle class, gay and straight.” west,” entirely skip naming what sort of pride it is My voice caught as 1 read that they’re celebrating). last part of the sentence. I read There was another man of history in that it over again, silently mouth crowd at the Harvey Milk screening—openly gay ing the words: “rich, poor and Portland Mayor-elect Sam Adams. In most of his middle class, gay and straight.” speeches and statements on the groundbreaking I stopped walking and just nature of his election, he dismisses his sexual ori said, “Wow.” And when I later entation as subsidiary to his other talents; he likes watched the YouTube video of to say, “There is no gay or straight way of filling Clinton’s performance, I was a pothole.” met with another wow: the But even in that pithy statement, he does roar of her D.C. crowd as she something powerful and prideful: He calls out his uttered the words “gay and straight,” so similar community. He recognizes his own status as an to that roar from Clinton Street Theater—the openly gay man and, in doing so, he recognizes us all. © roar of recognition. Corner View "[Hillary Clinton] called out, demographic by demographic, the wonderfully varied faces of Americans who voted for her in the primary... 'women and men, young and old, Latino and Asian...African American and Caucasian, rich, poor and middle class, gay and straight.'" out lout lout out < t lout So amazing, that simple power of being noted, of naming and being named. It seems to be one of the tenets of “gay pride”: the act of naming oneself and others, of claiming a part of one’s identity so often difficult (if not impossible) to be claimed. lout < lout Staff Writer S tephen M arc B eaudoin writes about Portland arts and queer culture at fromeverycomer, blogspot.com. He welcomes feedback at Stephen® justout.com. lout t ! lout Citi lout "BEST HAT DOG DIS SIDE OF ( 3901NÍ MIK BU Opt. 7 (503) 493-4537 Lounge Montags 301 SE Morrison Portland, OR 503-234-1324 1700 North Killingsworth Street One block from MAX in North Portland • w w w r o u x r e s t a vi r a n tu s
