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.'"
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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.
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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.
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