Oscar-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black had not said much about the controversy that arose earlier this year when the dean of students at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, said he was unwelcome to screen his film Milk on campus and to speak to students about it.

Lance was in town to shoot a new movie – he was directing this time – and lived in the conservative town for several months. A student he met at a coffee shop had asked him to do a screening. He writes about the experience – and its surprising twist – in a column on The Daily Beast.

I had met the same fate as many of my favorite writers: I was banned. Naïveté was gone. My education had begun. Between the apologetic handshakes were glares from unknown locals. The politeness I’d come to admire was lifted up, revealing hidden enmity. But let me be clear: I don’t think the town was homophobic. I think they had simply never discussed gay rights openly before, and here I was, an interloper, threatening to thrust this hot-button issue into their community. As the dean kept talking and students began protesting, calls came from journalists in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York. I did my best to stay focused, wrap up production, and in the end, decided to move my editing room out of West Michigan.

But that’s not how the story ends. Two weeks ago, in blizzard conditions, a Delta pilot landed on a snowy runway in Grand Rapids, and I drove the half hour from the airport to Holland, watching SUVs slide into ditches in front of me. With five minutes to spare, I arrived at the Park Theater off Main Street, right across from the steeples of Hope College.

Why had I made the journey back? Because when I decided I needed to set things right with the people of Holland who had been so welcoming, I called that same student who had come up to me in the coffee shop months ago, and we decided not to take “no” for an answer.

He organized a new group called “Hope Is Ready,” and raised funds from local city leaders who had never taken a stand on gay rights before, but in the face of Hope’s now widely publicized homophobia, decided to put their quiet courtesy aside (most for the first time), and donated time, money, and space to do what Hope wouldn’t: have this conversation.

The theater sold out in an hour. We booked a second night at a larger venue and it, too, filled up. As the film wrapped up, Harvey called out from the screen: “You gotta give ‘em HOPE. You gotta give ‘em HOPE.” And for the first time, those words meant something very different to me. They meant, as we fight for equality in California and New York, we can’t forget about those kids out there in small-town America, in the Hollands or Hope Colleges. Their lives are too valuable.

Related post: Dustin Lance Black at Lifeworks event: “It took a turn of luck to discover I had someone I could look up to, and a turn of luck to save my life.

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