Meet in the Middle 4 Equality was organized and personally paid for by a woman in Fresno who wanted to try and bring the more liberal-minded Northern and Southern California residents to make a positive appearance in the extremely conservative middle of the state.

That part was cool. There were some great speakers at the rally. Lt Daniel Cho was a little firecracker, very intense. After two hours of the same stuff over and over, however, we were starting to crave sitting on our porch with beers.

At one point of the rally, I was standing on a cement bench in the back to get a better look when I happened to glance over. About to make his way through the crowd was oscar-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black.

I didn’t care if I was in only flip-flops, I took off!

I weaved through the people, dodged the other homos, finally reached him and tapped him on the back.

I shook his hand, told him I loved his screenplay for Milk and that I appreciated his acceptance speech. He was very friendly, smiled and thanked me.

Uh, I shook an oscar-winning screenwriter’s hand!

Of course I shook it with the hand I was coughing in all day and have since found out I have bronchitis. Let’s hope he doesn’t get sick.

Oh my God. This was, um. This was not an easy film to make. First off, I have to thank Cleve Jones and Anne Kronenberg and all the real-life people who shared their stories with me. And, um, Gus Van Sant, Sean Penn, Emile Hirsch, Josh Brolin, James Franco, and our entire cast, my producers, Dan Jinks and Bruce Cohen, everyone at Groundswell and Focus, for taking on the challenge of telling this life-saving story.

When I was 13 years old, my beautiful mother and my father moved me from a conservative Mormon home in San Antonio, Texas to California and I heard the story of Harvey Milk. And it gave me hope. It gave me the hope to live my life, it gave me the hope to one day live my life openly as who I am and that maybe even I could fall in love and one day get married.

I want to thank my mom who has always loved me for who I am, even when there was pressure not to. But most of all, if Harvey had not been taken from us 30 years ago, I think he’d want me to say to all of the gay and lesbian kids out there tonight who have been told that they are less than by their churches or by the government or by their families that you are beautiful, wonderful creatures of value and that no matter what anyone tells you, God does love you and that very soon, I promise you, you will have equal rights, federally, across this great nation of ours. Thank you, thank you, and thank you God for giving us Harvey Milk.