Oscar-winning scribe, Milk writer Dustin Lance Black.The 34-year-old screenwriter accepted the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay on Sunday. His acceptance speech was censored in fifty different Asian nations by pan-Asian satellite TV network STAR, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.
STAR spokeswoman Jannie Poon defended the network’s muting of the words “gay” and “lesbian” by saying STAR has “a responsibility to take the sensitivities and guidelines of all our markets into consideration.”
Here’s Dustin’s uncensored speech in its entirety: “This was 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. 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 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 one day I could live my life openly as who I am and then maybe
even I could even fall in love and one day get married.“I wanna 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, 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.”