Last night I took a friend who was visiting from New York to the airport. We got in a great philosophical conversation about whether gay rights are the inevitable result of a free society. At this point in history, it’s possible to view gay marriage and other advances as “just a matter of time”. The truth is there are people who faced police brutality, unemployment, societal rejection, and death to make this conversation even possible. There are people who still face these horrors, but that’s another film…
On These Shoulders We Stand puts us across the living room from a fabulous cross-section of the activists of the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. There’s Ivy Bottini, founder and president of NOW New York. She was sacked when the term “Lesbian Menace” was coined.
There’s Dale Reynolds, the Hollywood leading man who founded Gay Actors RAP to fight homophobia in the film industry. Then there’s Reverend Troy Perry, founder of the Metropolitan Community Church who helped organize the first Pride Parade in L.A. a year after Stonewall.
Continue reading »
