The Education of Harvey Milk

The New York Times this morning gives Gus Van Sandt's new movie Milk starring Sean Penn in the title role a rave review. And now, I'm dying to see it. I've always loved that documentary about his life from 1984, The Life and Times of Harvey Milk.

The real Harvey Milk campaigning in San Francisco.

Both the movie and the documentary concentrate, understandably, on Milk's life and pioneering work in San Francisco. But he had a fairly dramatic life before that here in New York. It might even make good material for another movie. While in New York, Milk was a largely closeted gay man working on Wall Street and in the insurance industry who avoided politics. His political education came in the form of a flaming passionate affair with the young Craig Rodwell, a very radically out gay man before the term "out" was invented. Rodwell regularly spent stints in jail and was frequently beat up in police stations because he always talked back to the cops. He stubbornly refused to accept the shame and secrecy that was the common lot of gay men at that time (late 1950s, early 1960s).  Rodwell had little patience for Milk's caution, and Milk sometimes found Rodwell's boldness alarming.  They fought constantly, and eventually broke up.  

Rodwell founded the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookstore in 1967, the first bookstore openly selling gay literature that was not a porn store. Rodwell also campaigned to have the Stonewall Bar closed down. It was mob owned, and stayed open because of police corruption. It was notorious for its filth; hepatitis was common among its regulars. He worked to a get a New York state law that forbade the selling of liquor to known sexual "deviants" repealed, the very law that created the corruption necessary to keep gay bars open in New York. Rodwell found himself caught up in the Stonewall riots of 1969.
It was Rodwell who taught Milk his politics, but Milk brought a generosity and pragmatism to politics that Rodwell lacked, and made it successful beyond all expectations.

Craig Rodwell in his bookstore about 1972

Rodwell is now largely forgotten except by a few historians. But, he played a very key role in the formation of Harvey Milk and of the modern LGBT movement.

A lot of the surviving Stonewall era activists complain about being forgotten and taken for granted these days.  Their complaint is just, but it's also a sign of success.  That younger generations take for granted things the earlier generations had to fight so hard for is a measure of real accomplishment.  Gay America, just like the rest of America, thinks history is bunk and a bore.  But as nasty old Freud always said, the past is there for us to trip over.  It is also there to encourage us.  It reminds us how far we've come, and shows us that even the worst obstacles can be overcome with courage, persistence, and solidarity.