Editor’s Note: Brenda Feigen is Counsel to Kenoff & Machtinger, LLP, where she practices anti-discrimination and entertainment law. A graduate of Harvard Law School, she co-founded Ms. Magazine with Gloria Steinem and directed with (now Justice) Ruth Bader Ginsburg the Women’s Rights Project of the ACLU. Her memoir, Not One of the Boys: Living Life as a Feminist, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2000. She moved from Manhattan to Los Angeles to produce her first feature film and currently lives there with Joanne Parrent, her longtime partner and maybe spouse.

Exactly 30 years ago, San Francisco’s openly gay supervisor, Harvey Milk, successfully led the fight against that year’s version of our Proposition H(8), Proposition 6, that would have prohibited gays and lesbians from teaching in California’s public schools. The issue now, of course, is our right to marry, which Prop. H(8) eliminated this past election day.

At first, I was happy to hear that the California Supreme Court last week decided to hear arguments on whether Proposition 8 should be overturned. Then, I thought about it a bit longer. The justices didn’t say whether the 18,000 of us who married during that magical period between June 16 and November 4 still qualified as married. But they did say no other same-sex couples can marry in the Golden State until they decide – sometime this Spring – whether or not to overturn H(8). And, frankly, it makes me really mad that I don’t know whether my spouse and I are, in fact, still married. If we’re not, we hang in some legal limbo. And nobody – gay or straight – wants that.

(Above you see Brenda and her spouse, Joanne, just before they received their marriage license in California.)

Aside from the emotional aspects of the decision, I’m also angry because, as I’ve mentioned before, I had hoped our marriage would help us to challenge the Defense of Marriage Act. You know, the act Bill Clinton signed that guarantees that the federal government need not recognize same-sex, “non-traditional” marriage. If I were married in California, I could go against the federal government for depriving us of our social security benefits, the right to transfer property to each other without being taxed and a host of other rights. In fact, there are over 2,000 rights that married straight couples have that we don’t, even if we are eventually deemed really married legally in California. Those benefits include the right to transfer property. Heterosexual couples can transfer money, houses or whatever to each other with no gift tax liability, but not same-sex couples. Nor can we guarantee that our widow or widower will inherit the inheritance that heterosexual couples may take for granted. We know, for sure right now, that we don’t get any benefits earned by our “spouse” when that spouse dies. Those hard-earned dollars go to the government – the same government that refuses to recognize our relationships. Does that sound fair to you?

So, as these emotions swirl, I’ve also been reading about “Milk,” the Sean Penn-starring bio-pic of Harvey Milk. For the uninitiated – and those not reading Variety – Milk was San Francisco’s openly gay city supervisor and was one of the ‘70s great gay activists until he was brutally shot down on the steps of City Hall. Ironically, it opens tomorrow; it’s supposed to be quite the movie, and worth a view or two, and, coincidentally, has become a central player in the Proposition H(8) battle. Harvey Milk fought vociferously for gay rights, yet the CEO of one of the film’s exhibitors, Cinemark’s Alan Stock, helped fund Proposition 8 — donating $9,999, to be exact. Gays and lesbians are not amused, and have helped organize vigils and protests against the company. And, as another twist of fate, one of the tactics is telling people to wait to go see “Milk,” which opens tomorrow, until December 5. Rather than patronizing the Cinemark chain, activists of all ilks are instructing allies to see the flick at alternative theaters. We want “Milk” to break the top three that weekend, but we surely don’t want Mr. Stock and his comrades raking in our queer dollars that should be spent encouraging supportive companies to keep fighting for and with us!