Music From Another World - Robin Talley Page 0,129

and started jumping, too.

“Oh, my gosh! Oh, my gosh!”

“We won, we won, we won!” I grabbed her and spun her in a circle, both of us being way too loud and neither of us caring. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it!”

“Me neither!” Her voice was giddily high. Shrieks were coming from the receiver where we’d dropped it on the couch, but we didn’t bother to pick it up.

“God, remember all those nights when they beat us?” I wrapped my arms tight around her waist, speaking into her ear, trying to keep my voice soft even though I wanted to scream in triumph. “How it always seemed like the end of the world?”

She nodded fervently. “Now here we are!”

“I’m so happy right now.”

I kissed her. I was smiling so big, my whole body filled with such joy. It was as if we were having our first kiss all over again, outside that high-school gym with Harvey waiting inside.

I pulled back just long enough to say, “I love you so much.” Then I leaned down to kiss her again.

“I need to write you a letter,” she said, the next time we broke apart. “As soon as you leave.”

I laughed. “What are you going to put in a letter that you haven’t already said tonight?”

“A million things. There’s so much going through my head right now, and for the first time, it’s all good.”

I smiled. “Me, too.”

“It’s going to be all right, isn’t it? Things are going to keep getting better.”

“Yeah.” I listened to the tinny cheers and whoops pouring from the phone. I shut my eyes and pictured our friends grinning and celebrating. All that love in one room.

When I opened them, I saw all the love in this room, right here, even though it was only Sharon and me.

“Yeah,” I said again. “Yeah. I think they are.”

Peace, love & hope, Tammy

Acknowledgments

“All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come.”

That’s a translation of a Victor Hugo quote. Harvey Milk copied it out by hand and hung it on his office wall.

After a series of groundbreaking protests in the 1950s and 60s, including at New York’s Stonewall Inn, as well as earlier demonstrations at Compton’s Cafeteria in San Francisco, Cooper Do-nuts in Los Angeles, and other sites, the movement for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning equality was on the cusp of a breakthrough. The time had come. By the mid-70s, you could almost feel it in the air.

Or so I’ve heard. I was a teen of the 1990s, but the collective memory of the ’70s hung heavy in my high-school days, from the fashion to the music to the language. But I was well beyond my teen years when I truly learned about this era and the history of the movement to which I owe so much. Harvey Milk and legions of other activists, including Sally Gearhart, Marsha P. Johnson, Frank Kameny, and countless others put their own lives on the line because they had faith that their work would lead to a better future for the generations that came after them.

I ended Sharon and Tammy’s story on a high note, with the defeat of Proposition 6 in California—a major event in a time when ballot-box victories for the LGBT rights movement were virtually unheard of—but there were many, many ups and downs during this period, just like we’re seeing today. Only weeks after the Prop 6 win, Harvey Milk was assassinated, along with San Francisco Mayor George Moscone. The killer was Dan White, who’d served alongside Milk on the Board of Supervisors. Although White confessed to the crimes and there was plenty of evidence that they were premeditated, he was ultimately convicted of voluntary manslaughter rather than first-degree murder. Riots and violent police raids on the Castro followed the announcement of the verdict.

For all the movement’s successes, it was clear there remained a lot of work to do, and that’s still the case today. Reports of hate crimes against the LGBT community are rising, with