Oscar winners make plea for gay rights

HOLLYWOOD: Gay rights took center stage at the Oscars ceremony when actor Sean Penn and the writer of the film "Milk" made impassioned pleas for
opponents of same-sex marriage
to rethink their stand.

Penn won the Academy's best actor award for his role as gay politician Harvey Milk, California's first openly gay man to be elected to public office, who was shot and killed in 1978.

"I think that it is a good time for those who voted for the ban against gay marriage to sit and reflect and anticipate their great shame and the shame in their grandchildren's eyes if they continue that way of support," Penn said as he accepted his golden statuette.

"We've got to have equal rights for everyone."

He dismissed a protest outside the glittering Hollywood ceremony by banner-waving opponents of gay marriage, which four months ago was overturned in California following a referendum.

The demos were "very sad in a way, because it's a demonstration of such emotional cowardice to be so afraid to be extending the same rights to a fellow man as you would want for yourself," Penn said after the ceremony.

Some 18,000 same-sex couples last year flocked to tie the knot in California when the Supreme Court ruled that gay marriage was legal in the state.

They included several famous couples such as Ellen DeGeneres who married partner Portia de Rossi, and Japanese-American actor George Takei, better known as Star Trek's Mr Sulu, who married longtime partner Brad Altman.

But in November, a referendum on the so-called Proposition Eight amended the state constitution to recognize marriage as only being between men and women.

The passing of the referendum has triggered at times violent protests, and left those couples who have already married in a legal limbo.

Dustin Lance Black, the writer of "Milk", who won the Academy Award for the best original screenplay also called for equal rights for gay Americans.

Addressing "gay and lesbian kids" watching the ceremony, Black said: "No matter what everyone tells you, God does love you ... very soon, I promise you, you will have equal rights federally across this great nation of ours."

Black described Milk's story as "life saving" and told of his own childhood growing up in a conservative Mormon home before moving to California.

"I heard the story of Harvey Milk and it gave me hope ... to live my life, it gave me the hope to one day I could live my life openly as who I am and that maybe even I could fall in love and one day get married," he said to warm applause.

Milk was killed in City Hall in 1978 along with San Francisco Mayor George Moscone by his former colleague Dan White, played in the film by Josh Brolin.

White, who served only five years in prison after his defense successfully argued he was guilty of manslaughter rather than murder, committed suicide in 1985, less than two years after his release from prison.

California's Supreme Court will on March 5 hear oral arguments in lawsuits seeking to annul the referendum. The court must issue its ruling within 90 days of the oral arguments.

Penn also called on President Barack Obama to modify his position against gay marriage, saying it was "inevitable ... because it's not a human luxury, these are human needs and they will be gotten."


Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com