Wilshire Boulevard was especially irritating tonight.

Out in full force was that particular breed of asshole, the LA driver -- the guy who speeds up to red lights, only to idle his hulking SUV in the pavement marked "DO NOT BLOCK"; the woman who lingers indecisively in an intersection making an unprotected left turn, wavers when the light turns yellow, and then slams on the brakes when it turns red, leaving both of you stranded in the intersection (at which point the light turns green for the assholes on either side, who proceed to aim for your car at full speed, skid abruptly to a stop, and punch down on their horns -- as if surprised that you're still there in the intersection, stranded by the asshole in front of you).

So anyway, the assholes were out, and together (I don't necessarily except myself from this group) we were crawling along, trailing an angry carbon footprint down Wilshire like a skid mark on the underpants of the city.

As I passed Rodeo, I saw lights up ahead to my left: a premiere. Now I was gearing up to unload on the real assholes: the quasi-unemployed self-important "industry people" whose premiere was fucking with my commute. The cars slowed even more as I rolled into position next to the red carpet lined with posters of Sean Penn's unattractive face. Also printed on the posters, the name of the movie: Milk.

On the other side of the street, to my right, I noticed another crowd: a sober, somber, candlelit counterpoint to the frenzy on my left. In slow motion, I saw them: people holding hand-written signs, most of which seemed to contain the word "Hope." I got ready to honk my horn, thinking these people had turned out to protest Prop 8 -- but something about the sad, charged expressions on their faces made me falter and stay silent. No one else was honking. What was this about? I saw a name on one of the signs. The name was Harvey Milk.

Ten minutes later I'm at home with my computer on my lap, finding out the answer to the subject of this posting -- an answer many of you may already know. That Harvey Milk was the first publicly gay man elected to public office in California. That Harvey Milk, the self-proclaimed "Mayor of Castro Street" (he actually served on the Board of Supervisors), is largely responsible for making San Francisco the gay haven it is today. In Milk's day, Proposition 6 -- aka the "Briggs Initiative" -- was the repulsive anti-gay ballot measure brought under the guise of "protecting children". As shocking as this now seems (even in the aftermath of Proposition 8), Proposition 6 actually called for the mandatory termination of all openly gay public school teachers (as well as any unabashed straight supporters of the gay lifestyle).

In campaigning against Prop 6 (which ultimately lost by more than a million votes), Milk addressed the crowd at San Francisco's Gay Freedom Day Parade with the following words, in what has come to be known as "The Hope Speech":

THIS makes us very happy.