On 4 November last year, as voters all over America were electing Barack Obama, those in California were ensuring that California proposition 8, a definition of marriage as a union between one man and one woman, was passed into law.
On 28 November – just over three weeks later – American cinemagoers watched Gus Van Sant's biopic of renowned gay rights activist Harvey Milk, in which Milk (played by Sean Penn) successfully battles against California proposition 6, a 1978 initiative that sought to make it illegal for gays and lesbians to teach in public schools.
Proposition 8 has remained contentious since. The parallels between Van Sant's movie and California's real-life political drama have seen Milk's strength as a rallying call for those who opposed the legislation grow to the point where a number of pundits have speculated that, had the movie come out before the vote, proposition 8 would never have been passed.
Van Sant has stated that he considered releasing the movie before the election but felt that the issues it addressed were about "more than just one proposition" and that the producers had done enough for the cause by previewing the movie before the vote. "The end decision was not to have the film speaking directly to the election," he told Filmmaker magazine, "because if it was seen to be just about the election that might take away its chance of having a life after the election."
Was he right? Or could the press attention that Milk received have tipped the vote in the anti-prop-8 camp's favour had it arrived before 4 November? Did that camp have enough support from Hollywood already? And was it Van Sant's responsibility as a politicised film-maker to have a greater consideration for real events when negotiating the release of his film?
As Harvey Milk himself once said: "Come out, come out, wherever you are" and tell us what you think.
