Harvey Milk

Credit: Corbis; Focus Features

Oscars 2009

INSIDE STORY: Forces Behind Milk Reflect on 'Devastating Year' for Gay Rights

Originally posted 02/09/2009 05:15PM

For the filmmakers behind Milk and the real-life activists portrayed in the Oscar-nominated film, the movie serves as a reminder of how the nation has changed – and how much they miss the slain gay politician.

Harvey Milk – played by Sean Penn in the film – was a San Francisco supervisor and California's first openly gay elected official. In the 1970s, he successfully led the charge against a proposition that would have disallowed gays and lesbians from teaching in California schools.

Three decades later, Proposition 8, a measure that revised the California constitution by defining marriage as being only between a man and a woman, was approved by voters in the recent election.

"They were able to win in a far more homophobic time, so why aren't we winning now?" asks Milk's Oscar-nominated screenwriter Dustin Lance Black. "This truly has been a devastating year for gay and lesbian people across the country."

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