Milk

Recently I have been hearing a lot about the movie "Milk", featuring Sean Penn. Some of my colleagues have been thinking again about the times of social unrest, civil rights movement and constant struggle in their lifetime. They were telling me about the times of Harvey Milk, and how much he meant to the gay civil right movement. While listening to them talk, I sensed that there was great emotional response triggered by this movie. The comparison of the struggles in the past, and the current ones were drawn. In my opinion, there has been a lot of change in the rights of the LGBT community since times of Harvey Milk. I also think that if Mr. Milk has not been killed, and in turn martyred, we would be living in a different country that would not even think of men and women of the same sex getting married or adopting children. Even my colleagues agreed that someone usually dies for the progress of the many. The question in my head popped up, why?

Why is death necessary in order for others to realized certain things. Virginia Woolf once said that people have to die in order for others to value life more. I wonder if we are that blind, as to not see some obvious problems in our lives and society in general, that an individual has to be sacrificed to open our eyes up.